Lifeboat Foundation

While a 90-day ceasefire period is in place for negotiators to end the war, major Chinese technology companies and national initiatives are expected to continue to face challenges in 2019 as the world’s two largest economies remain at loggerheads over global leadership in hi-tech innovation.

Here we take a look at the views of analysts, executives, and experts to see which sectors and companies will likely be in the spotlight in 2019 and what the big issues are expected to be.

Continue reading “2019 China tech look ahead: trade war likely to cast a shadow as AI, e-commerce, smartphone progress continues” »

Power suits, robotaxis, Leonardo da Vinci mania—just a few of the things to look out for in 2019. But what else will make our top ten stories for the year ahead?

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Continue reading “What will be the biggest stories of 2019? | Part One | The Economist” »

Quantum computing will break most of the encryption schemes on which we rely today. These five tips will help you get ready.

Search on the phrase “quantum computing,” and you’ll find a furious debate. On the one hand, you’ll read breathless articles predicting groundbreaking advances in artificial intelligence, genomics, economics, and pretty much every field under the sun. On the other, you’ll find the naysayers: It’s all hype. Large-scale quantum computers are still decades away — if they’re possible at all. Even if they arrive, they won’t be much faster than standard computers except for a tiny subset of problems.

There’s one area, however, where you’ll find all sides agree: Quantum computing will break most of the encryption schemes on which we rely today. If you’re responsible for your organization’s IT or security systems, and that sentence made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, good. To get ready for a post-quantum world, you should be thinking about the problem now.

Continue reading “Start Preparing Now for the Post-Quantum Future” »

The government should consider giving out monthly Social Security checks—no strings attached.

What is UBI? How would free money change our lives.

Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz

Continue reading “Universal Basic Income Explained – Free Money for Everybody? UBI” »

“In the early 21st century, perhaps the most important artistic genre is science fiction … [It shapes] how people understand the most important technological, social, and economic developments of our time.” —Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

The launch of thousands of new satellites will boost the space economy.

by Eloisa Marchesoni

Today, I will talk about the recent creation of really intelligent machines, able to solve difficult problems, to recreate the creativity and versatility of the human mind, machines not only able to excel in a single activity but to abstract general information and find solutions that are unthinkable for us. I will not talk about blockchain, but about another revolution (less economic and more mathematical), which is all about computing: quantum computers.

Quantum computing is not really new, as we have been talking about it for a couple of decades already, but we are just now witnessing the transition from theory to realization of such technology. Quantum computers were first theorized at the beginning of the 1980s, but only in the last few years, thanks to the commitment of companies like Google and IBM, a strong impulse has been pushing the development of these machines. The quantum computer is able to use quantum particles (imagine them to be like electrons or photons) to process information. The particles act as positive or negative (i., the 0 and the 1 that we are used to see in traditional computer science) alternatively or at the same time, thus generating quantum information bits called “qubits”, which can have value either 0 or 1 or a quantum superposition of 0 and 1.

Continue reading “How developments in Quantum Computing could affect cryptocurrencies” »

The accelerating investment in artificial intelligence has vast implications for economic and cognitive development globally. However, AI is currently dominated by an oligopoly of centralized mega-corporations, who focus on the interests of their stakeholders. There is a now universal need for AI services by businesses who lack access to capital to develop their own AI services, and independent AI developers lack visibility and a source of revenue. This uneven playing field has a high potential to lead to inequitable circumstances with negative implications for humanity. Furthermore, the potential of AI is hindered by the lack of interoperability standards. The authors herein propose an alternative path for the development of AI: a distributed, decentralized, and democratized market for AIs run on distributed ledger technology. We describe the features and ethical advantages of such a system using SingularityNET, a watershed project being developed by Ben Goertzel and colleagues, as a case study. We argue that decentralizing AI opens the doors for a more equitable development of AI and AGIt will also create the infrastructure for coordinated action between AIs that will significantly facilitate the evolution of AI into true AGI that is both highly capable and beneficial for humanity and beyond.