Axios

Natural Language Processing is one of AI's hottest fields, yielding both practical products in the marketplace and bleeding-edge research.

The big picture: A virtual assistant that you can truly converse with — which depends on highly accurate speech and text recognition — is still beyond the horizon, but the field is making real progress.

At a hearing on SolarWinds last Friday before the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees, U.S. representatives seized on a statement by SolarWinds’ former CEO that in 2017 an intern had mistakenly posted a password, “SolarWinds123,” on the public-facing internet that could have provided a malicious actor with full access to the company’s update server.

Why it matters: Last week’s congressional hearings — and the confused and confusing response to the hack by some policymakers, industry mavens and government agencies — underscored the inherent tensions in “achieving” cybersecurity in a world of cross-cutting, and often mutually exclusive, goals.

Facebook will finally allow advertisers to resume running political and social issue ads in the U.S. on Thursday, according to a company update.

The big picture: Facebook and rival Google instituted political ad bans to slow the spread of misinformation and curb confusion around the presidential election and its aftermath.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a true industry, with all the pluses and minuses that entails, according to a sweeping new report.

Why it matters: AI is now in nearly every area of business, with the pandemic pushing even more investment in drug design and medicine. But as the technology matures, challenges around ethics and diversity grow.

Google made clear Wednesday that after it finished phasing out third-party cookies over the next year or so, it won't introduce other forms of identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web.

Why it matters: The move comes amid increased scrutiny over the way tech giants use consumer data to reinforce their dominance, particularly around personalized advertising.

Tech giants, under pressure of new privacy laws, are dismantling some of the engines that drive targeted online advertising — even as consumers are doing more shopping online than ever, thanks to the pandemic.

Driving the news: Tuesday, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a new privacy law allowing consumers to opt out of having their data processed for targeted advertising. Meanwhile, Google made clear that after it finishes phasing out third-party cookies over the next year, it won't introduce other forms of identifiers to track individuals as they browse the web.

Baltimore is piloting a software program developed by Everytown for Gun Safety that will enable it for the first time to identify patterns of gun trafficking and illegal sales.

Why it matters: If successful, this crime-fighting software — which draws data from multiple systems and connects the dots — could be used to crack down in many cities where gun violence is a big problem.

Applovin, a mobile ad tech company that's expanded into video game publishing, has filed with the SEC to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol APP.

Why it matters: Applovin was one of the more high-profile casualties of CFIUS' heightened scrutiny of deals involving Chinese investors early on during Donald Trump's presidency.

Collectibles and art have gone digital, enabled by a new sort of technology known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Just recently, Canadian singer and visual artist Grimes earned $6 million via an NFT auction, while a maker of digital basketball cards was valued at around $2 billion by venture capitalists.

Axios Re:Cap digs into the NFT craze with David Pakman, a partner with VC firm Venrock and one of the earliest investors in one of the earliest NFTs, called CryptoKitties.

Gideon Lichfield, who has been editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review since 2017, has been named global editorial director of Wired, the company announced on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Lichfield replaces Nicholas Thompson, who left the company to become CEO of The Atlantic earlier this year. Thompson's title had been editor-in-chief.

Microsoft is using its Ignite customer conference to highlight its commitment to mixed reality, announcing new cloud services for hosting virtual objects that can be shared across devices and delivering Tuesday's keynote speech from within its Altspace VR virtual world.

Why it matters: Mixed reality, including VR and AR, is widely seen as the next frontier of computing interfaces. Although Facebook's Oculus tends to get more attention, Microsoft has been steadily investing in both its Hololens headset as well as Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets from HP and others.

Kum & Go's kinda weird, kinda cool TikTok has 2.6 million likes.

Driving the news: That's more than some Fortune 500 companies, like Taco Bell and Target. And it's all led by Evelyn Meyer, a 20-year-old internet mastermind.

Traffic to Australian news sites has sprung back after Facebook struck a last-minute deal with lawmakers last week to pay some publishers and resume link-sharing on its platform, according to data from Chartbeat.

The big picture: The news showdown in Australia is advancing conversations globally around a more equitable payout structure between the world's biggest tech firms and news publishers.

The U.S., which once had a dominant head start in artificial intelligence, now has just a few years' lead on China and risks being overtaken unless government steps in, according to a new report to Congress and the White House.

Why it matters: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who chaired the committee that issued the report, tells Axios that the U.S. risks dire consequences if it fails to both invest in key technologies and fully integrate AI into the military.

Real estate software company Compass filed for its long-rumored IPO on Monday.

Why it matters: It's the latest company in SoftBank's Vision Fund portfolio to file for an IPO — a source of much of the megafund's good fortunes over the past year.