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Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 812

Apr 4, 2016

Quantum computing: Game changer or security threat?

Posted by in categories: computing, finance, quantum physics, security

Definitely a game changer; security threat depends on who gets the technology adopted on a broad scale first prior to other countries (China? USA? Australia? Russia? UK? CAN?, etc.)


Quantum computing offers financial institutions the prospect of faster transactions and lower trading costs, but is it also a threat to security?

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Apr 3, 2016

IBM’s resistive computing could massively accelerate AI — and get us closer to Asimov’s Positronic Brain

Posted by in categories: computing, robotics/AI

Neural networks have enabled a revolution in machine learning. IBM researchers show how resistive computing can be used to make them massively more powerful.

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Apr 3, 2016

New link between quantum computing and black hole may solve information loss problem

Posted by in categories: computing, cosmology, quantum physics

Some more words on this idea that black holes are quantum computers.

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Apr 2, 2016

All quantum communication involves nonlocality

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

Researchers of CWI, University of Gdansk, Gdansk University of Technology, Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of Cambridge have proven that quantum communication is based on nonlocality. They show that whenever quantum communication is more efficient than classical communication, it must be possible find a nonlocal correlation somewhere. Their paper ‘Quantum communication complexity advantage implies violation of a Bell inequality’, appeared in this month’s issue of the influential journal PNAS.

It has long been known that predicts counterintuitive effects such as instantaneous interaction at a distance between entangled particles. This teleportation effect, which Albert Einstein famously called ‘spooky action at a distance,’ was long thought to show that the theory of quantum mechanics was incomplete. However, in 1964, physicist J.S. Bell proved that no theory involving the principle of locality can ever reproduce all predictions of quantum mechanics. In other words, it is impossible to find classical explanations for quantum correlations. This evidence for the existence of nonlocality became known as Bell’s inequality.

For a long time, the existence of was merely of interest to philosophically minded physicists, and was considered an exotic peculiarity rather than a useful resource for practical problems in physics or computer science. This has changed dramatically in recent years. Quantum correlation proved to be very useful in information processing. In several communication tasks, using quantum effects substantially reduced the communication complexity: the minimum number of steps necessary to complete a certain task between two parties. In such cases, there is a so-called quantum advantage in communication complexity.

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Apr 2, 2016

The Bernie Sanders Phenomenon and Transhumanism

Posted by in categories: business, computing, economics, employment, geopolitics, mathematics, robotics/AI, transhumanism, virtual reality

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9grWo5ZofmA

A lot of transhumanism friends have asked me to write about Bernie Sanders, so here are my thoughts:


The transhumanism movement has been dramatically growing in size—and most of that growth is from millennials and youth joining. Transhumanists want to use science and technology to radically improve the human race, and the onslaught of new gear and gadgets to do that—like virtual reality, robots, and chip implants —are giving them plenty of ammunition to do that.

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Apr 2, 2016

‘Machine learning’ is a revolution as big as the internet or personal computers

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, robotics/AI

Welcome to the future.

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Apr 1, 2016

Brainstorming New Ways To Test If Cosmos Is One Big Computer Simulation

Posted by in categories: computing, space

Blast from the past. Someone in an astrobiology group seemed to question the validity of the question in my recent story on 5 Questions For E.T. about whether the universe is artificial. Here’s my response:


In the dog days of summer, when a gush of hot air from a Fifth Avenue subway grate can feel as real as it gets, take heart that the downtown traffic nipping at your heels may just be part of a cosmic-scale computer simulation.

The idea that the cosmos and everything in it could be a super-advanced civilization’s version of Xbox first came to the fore a little over a decade ago.

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Apr 1, 2016

Artificial intelligence steals money from banking customers

Posted by in categories: computing, economics, humor, robotics/AI

However, Rob Ott, a computer scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who did work on the system—Deep Learning Interface for Accounting (DELIA)—notes that it simply held all of the missing money, some $40,120.16, in a “rainy day” account. “I don’t think you can attribute malice,” he says. “I’m sure DELIA was going to give the money back.”


Technologists shocked by program’s ability to set its own priorities—such as getting rich.

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Apr 1, 2016

This neural network ‘hallucinates’ the right colors into black and white pictures

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience, robotics/AI

The machine overlords of the future may now, if it pleases them, eliminate all black and white imagery from the history of their meat-based former masters. All they’ll need is this system from Berkeley computer scientist Richard Zhang, which allows a soulless silicon sentience to “hallucinate” colors into any monochrome image.

It uses what’s called a convolutional neural network (several, actually) — a type of computer vision system that mimics low-level visual systems in our own brains in order to perceive patterns and categorize objects. Google’s DeepDream is probably the most well-known example of one. Trained by examining millions of images of— well, just about everything, Zhang’s system of CNNs recognizes things in black and white photos and colors them the way it thinks they ought to be.

Grass, for instance, has certain features — textures, common locations in images, certain other things often found on or near it. And grass is usually green, right? So when the network thinks it recognizes grass, it colors that region green. The same thing occurs for recognizing certain types of butterflies, building materials, flowers, the nose of a certain breed of dog and so on.

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Apr 1, 2016

Successfully Engineering Water-loving Nanoparticle Diodes

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics, engineering

Nanoparticle diodes and devices that work when wet.

“Groundbreaking” research by Prof. Bartosz Grzybowski (School of Natural Science).
Nanoparticle Diodes and Devices That Work When Wet.

A new study by an international team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has found a new way to produce electronic devices, such as diodes, logic gates, and sensors without the need of semiconductors.

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