SINCE Japan launched its first deep space probe in 1985, the photographs have been taken in a relatively low-tech way, by pointing cameras at objects in the cosmos and letting them run. Whatever is captured gets sent back to Earth, where people cull the material for the most beautiful shots.

Problem is, this dragnet approach uses up precious bandwidth and batteries. So Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is experimenting with a camera that’s more discriminating: It decides which pictures have the best light, angle and composition, and beams back only those. Using artificial intelligence (AI) on powerful, large computers? That’s no big deal. But it’s a lot harder on a tiny spacecraft with its serious energy constraints.

Enter LeapMind Inc., a Tokyo company specialized in “edge computing,” or running computations not on a central server or even a PC, but on remote devices with limited processing power and no internet connection. The idea is to bring AI to traffic lights, security cameras, home appliances — or even the odd space probe.

Artificial intelligence can do amazing things, but it’s still rare because the math takes enormous computing power and loads of electricity. This means driverless cars must be something akin to data centers on wheels, with dozens of processors that can get hot enough to boil water. Edge computing promises to make AI work inside the thousands of smaller gadgets and machines in people’s homes and offices.

“The hurdles to putting AI in actual products are really high,” said LeapMind’s founder, Soichi Matsuda, 36. “There are all kinds of severe limitations: price, power-consumption, dealing with exhaust heat.”

“Edge AI is becoming more and more important, especially in areas where latency, power consumption, connectivity and security matter,” said Anthony Lin, senior managing director at LeapMind investor Intel Capital.

In order to understand what makes edge computing so difficult, it helps to recall your high school algebra. Each variable in a typical AI algorithm is built out of a 32-digit string of ones and zeros that allows for 4.3 billion possible combinations.

The trick in edge computing is shaving down the numbers so they can be processed by smaller chips, but without losing too much precision. It’s a challenge because for every digit that’s lopped off, there’s an exponential loss in expressiveness.

This is why even the smallest achievements in edge computing are treated as major victories. In March, for example, when Google announced it finally managed to get a speech-recognition function to run offline on its smartphones, at least one Google engineer called the effort “heroic.” For most users the difference is probably unnoticeable, but making it work without being connected to the internet required chopping the program’s variables down from 32 to 8 digits, or bits.

LeapMind is working at a level that’s orders of magnitude smaller, just 1 or 2 bits, according to Matsuda. It’s the computer science equivalent of boiling the English language down to just four words and somehow still being able to convey a lot of meaning.

“When we started working on this in 2015, we knew that someone like Google would eventually do 8 bits,” Matsuda said. “So we had to aim higher.”

The techniques developed by LeapMind are sufficient for many, but not all tasks. You couldn’t run a driverless car with them, for example. But they’d be useful for driver-assist functions or other less-exacting work.

Which brings us back to the space agency’s photography problem.

As it stands, JAXA’s probes can’t devote scarce computing power to getting visually-pleasing photos, no matter how valuable they are for PR purposes, because it would come at the expense of doing actual science. The photos that the public sees now have been taken in the process of doing other work, not specifically for their beauty.

That’s why JAXA researcher Takayuki Ishida decided to try using LeapMind’s tools to build a smart camera. He started by taking 10,000 photos of planet and probe models, shot from different angles and with different juxtapositions, and ranking them in terms of aesthetic appeal.

JAXA declined to comment, but Ishida described his experiments in a paper he presented at a February conference held by LeapMind.

If the system works, it would be a small step forward for space exploration and perhaps a big leap for everyday devices closer to home. — Bloomberg

PEXELS

IN THE LEGEND of Mir, warriors and sorcerers battle creatures from an ancient universe. Now, WeMade Co.’s long-time video game hit is at the center of a string of legal battles that could serve as a rallying cry for foreign companies harboring grievances against Chinese rivals.

Over the last three years, the South Korean studio’s chief executive officer, Henry Chang, has filed about 65 lawsuits in China, Singapore and South Korea against Chinese gaming studios, attempting to block what he alleges are unlicensed versions of his two-decade-old title.

That makes the 44-year-old one of the few foreign executives audacious enough to challenge a batch of Chinese firms in the world’s largest video game market.

He’s already racked up a few victories: In December, a Beijing court ordered Guangzhou-based 37 Interactive Entertainment Technology Co. to stop selling a game allegedly based on Mir. In May, a Singapore-based arbitration court required a unit of China’s Kingnet Network Co. to pay WeMade 468 million yuan ($68 million) in royalties.

Chang’s crusade provides a window into new challenges facing a $38 billion video game industry dominated by local behemoths Tencent Holdings Ltd. and NetEase Inc. Chinese courts are taking a tougher stance on copyright laws. And while multinationals have long avoided filing suits against rivals in China, Chang feels it’s now worth the effort partly because US President Donald Trump’s trade war has raised awareness about intellectual property.

“Some people say Trump is bringing the world to its end, but I think he’s playing a positive role when it comes to China,” said Chang, a grey-haired executive who prefers jeans to suits “He’s speeding up China’s change through pressure.”

Chang could also use the money: WeMade now relies on royalties from licensed games like Mir for half its revenue.

On its WeChat account on May 10, before the arbitration court’s ruling, Kingnet said that although it was open to negotiations, the damages WeMade was seeking were too high. It urged the South Korean firm to stop “ill-intentioned” lawsuits and “unreasonable” demands. Tencent didn’t comment, while Kingnet and 37 Interactive didn’t respond to questions.

“We fully respect the intellectual property rights of others and of our own, and we are a constant advocate for the protection of copyright,” NetEase said in an emailed statement. “NetEase has always had a ‘zero tolerance’ policy toward copycatting/plagiarism.”

Even before the trade war, Chinese courts had begun enhancing protections for intellectual property, as more domestic corporations climbed the value chain and produced cutting-edge innovations. But Chang feels that’s accelerated as Trump called attention to the issue.

He hopes winning more suits will boost profitability. Still, the effects of court battles like his could be felt beyond video games.

“It would embolden more foreign companies, especially ones in the US and Japan, to go ahead with suing Chinese firms on Chinese soil,” said Wi Jong-hyun, a professor of business management at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University. “These lawsuits would add headaches for Chinese companies who would no longer enjoy the kind of protection they would in the past.”

Foreign firms are restricted from selling games without a local partner in China, which research firm Newzoo estimates is home to more than 600 million gamers. But growth slowed for the industry after Beijing froze licenses for new games for nine months last year and attempted to reduce screen time for teenagers.

Other international companies, including US-based Activision Blizzard Inc. and Seoul-based PUBG Corp., have previously sued Chinese firms for allegedly ripping off content. And the gaming industry in other parts of the world, including South Korea, has in the past been blamed for allowing other varieties of copycats.

But Byun Ung-jae, a lawyer with Seoul-based Yulchon LLC, said China’s courts have become quicker to prohibit possible knockoffs from selling.

“WeMade stands out because they’ve been brave and dogged enough to take the fight to the court for quite some time,” said Byun, who doesn’t have business ties with the company. “China’s gaming industry has also grown huge now, so the country also feels it’s time to provide protection for its own sake.”

WeMade struck gold about 20 years ago when it released Mir through Shanda Games in China, getting as many as 200 million people to sign up at one point.

But in the summer of 2015, as Chang traveled to China, he was shocked to learn that games almost identical to Mir were in service there.

Yet his company had spotted red flags years before. In 2003, WeMade sued Shanda for allegedly copying Mir in its own game without licensing. The dispute was settled several years later, after Shanda bought a majority stake in a Korean company that is a Mir co-licensor.

Shanda, which still runs the original Mir game in China and didn’t respond to a request for comment, is in a separate lawsuit with WeMade about renewing their licensing agreement.

Winning isn’t easy. In April, a Hangzhou court issued an injunction, temporarily stopping another Kingnet unit from publishing one version of a game WeMade said was based on Mir. Kingnet produced a new version, sparking another round of legal battles over what WeMade says is really the same game.

It’s easy to see why Chang likes Trump’s toughness on China, but he also worries about a trade war escalation.

“It has been positive so far, with China showing off its judicial system,” Chang said. “But if this really turns into a war, it may no longer feel like doing so.” — Bloomberg