Lifeboat Foundation

Biography:
Stuart Russell received his B.A. with first-class honours in physics from Oxford University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1986. He then joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is Professor (and formerly Chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery at UC San Francisco and Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on AI and Robotics. He has published over 150 papers on a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multitarget tracking, computer vision, computational physiology, and global seismic monitoring. His books include “The Use of Knowledge in Analogy and Induction”, “Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality” (with Eric Wefald), and “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach” (with Peter Norvig).

Abstract:
Autonomous weapons systems select and engage targets without human intervention; they become lethal when those targets include humans. LAWS might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate enemy combatants in a city, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. The artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics communities face an important ethical decision: whether to support or oppose the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).

Continue reading “Lethal Autonomous Weapons” »

Awesome.

What once took months by some of the world’s leading scientists can now be done in seconds by undergraduate students thanks to software developed at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing, paving the way for fast, secure quantum communication.

Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo developed the first available software to evaluate the security of any protocol for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

Continue reading “Computing a secret, unbreakable key” »

Google unveils custom TPU chip, which it says advances computing performance by three generations.

Finally, some well deserved recogonition to Argonne Natl. Labs in their efforts on QC with the Univ. Of Chicago.

If biochemists had access to a quantum computer, they could perfectly simulate the properties of new molecules to develop novel drugs in ways that would take the fastest existing computers decades.

Electrons represent an ideal quantum bit, with a “spin” that when pointing up can represent a 0 and down can represent a 1. Such bits are small—even smaller than an atom—and because they do not interact strongly, they can remain quantum for long periods. However, exploiting electrons as qubits also poses a challenge because they must be trapped and manipulated. Which is exactly what David Schuster, assistant professor of physics, and his collaborators at UChicago, Argonne National Laboratory and Yale University have done.

Continue reading “New device steps toward isolating single electrons for quantum computing” »

Moore’s Law was already identified as a problem regardless of Quantum. And, the move to Quantum happened regardless of Moores Law and the excitment around QC was not the result of Moores Law limitations. Just like all things, we evolve to better level of maturity.

The chip industry is giving another sign that Moore’s Law is coming to an end, but IBM is offering a glimpse at what might be computing’s future.

Industry experts from around the world who have been working together for years for forecast technology advances in the tech industry are throwing in the towel.

Continue reading “With Moore’s Law in doubt, eyes turn to quantum computing” »

By reinventing the neural network, the company hopes to help computers make the leap from processing words and symbols to comprehending the real world.

Princeton’s answer to Quantum friction.

Abstract: Theoretical chemists at Princeton University have pioneered a strategy for modeling quantum friction, or how a particle’s environment drags on it, a vexing problem in quantum mechanics since the birth of the field. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

“It was truly a most challenging research project in terms of technical details and the need to draw upon new ideas,” said Denys Bondar, a research scholar in the Rabitz lab and corresponding author on the work.

Quantum friction may operate at the smallest scale, but its consequences can be observed in everyday life. For example, when fluorescent molecules are excited by light, it’s because of quantum friction that the atoms are returned to rest, releasing photons that we see as fluorescence. Realistically modeling this phenomenon has stumped scientists for almost a century and recently has gained even more attention due to its relevance to quantum computing.

Posted by norm jouppi, distinguished hardware engineer, google.

Machine learning provides the underlying oomph to many of Google’s most-loved applications. In fact, more than 100 teams are currently using machine learning at Google today, from Street View, to Inbox Smart Reply, to voice search.

But one thing we know to be true at Google: great software shines brightest with great hardware underneath. That’s why we started a stealthy project at Google several years ago to see what we could accomplish with our own custom accelerators for machine learning applications.

Continue reading “Google supercharges machine learning tasks with TPU custom chip” »

New graphene transistor makes for a faster processor.

Scientists have developed a new type of graphene-based transistor and using modelling they have demonstrated that it has ultralow power consumption compared with other similar transistor devices. The findings have been published in a paper in the journal Scientific Reports. The most important effect of reducing power consumption is that it enables the clock speed of processors to be increased. According to calculations, the increase could be as high as two orders of magnitude.

“The point is not so much about saving electricity — we have plenty of electrical energy. At a lower power, electronic components heat up less, and that means that they are able to operate at a higher clock speed — not one gigahertz, but ten for example, or even one hundred,” says the corresponding author of the study, the head of MIPT’s Laboratory of Optoelectronics and Two-Dimensional Materials, Dmitry Svintsov.