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Category: information science – Page 353

Controversial Quantum Machine Bought

Governments and leading computing companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google are trying to develop what are called quantum computers because using the weirdness of quantum mechanics to represent data should unlock immense data-crunching powers. Computing giants believe quantum computers could make their artificial-intelligence software much more powerful and unlock scientific leaps in areas like materials science. NASA hopes quantum computers could help schedule rocket launches and simulate future missions and spacecraft. “It is a truly disruptive technology that could change how we do everything,” said Deepak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Biswas spoke at a media briefing at the research center about the agency’s work with Google on a machine they bought in 2013 from Canadian startup D-Wave systems, which is marketed as “the world’s first commercial quantum computer.” The computer is installed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and operates on data using a superconducting chip called a quantum annealer. A quantum annealer is hard-coded with an algorithm suited to what are called “optimization problems,” which are common in machine-learning and artificial-intelligence software.

However, D-Wave’s chips are controversial among quantum physicists. Researchers inside and outside the company have been unable to conclusively prove that the devices can tap into quantum physics to beat out conventional computers.

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The Universe is a Quantum Algorithm, and the proof has been found in the … Stock Market

Which mean for us?

Recently, quantum gates and quantum circuits have been found when portfolios of stocks were simulated in quantum computation processes, pointing out to the existence of a bizarre quantum code beneath the stock market transactions. The quantum code of the stock market might prove to have a more profound signification if is related to the recent finding of quantum codes at the deepest levels of our reality, such as quantum mechanics of black holes and the space-time of the universe. Could this mysterious stock market quantum code be a tiny fragment of a quantum code that our universe uses to create the physical reality?

John Preskill’s talk „Is spacetime a quantum error-correcting code?” held at the Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico, and previously at Kavli Institute for Theoretical physics, may represent a turning point in physical research related to questioning the existence and evolution of our Universe. The essence of this talk may change forever our understanding of the Universe, shifting the perspective of physical research from masses and energies to codes of information theory.

John Preskill, professor at California Institute of Technology, is well known mostly for his remarkable developments of quantum computational models, more specifically topological quantum computing. Preskill’s lectures inspire a whole generation of brilliant physicists working on quantum computation. This experience in quantum computing may point out Dr. Preskill to knock at the Universe gates with the unique perspective of a quantum code reality.

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A Short History of AI, and Why It’s Heading in the Wrong Direction

Sir Winston Churchill often spoke of World War 2 as the “Wizard War”. Both the Allies and Axis powers were in a race to gain the electronic advantage over each other on the battlefield. Many technologies were born during this time – one of them being the ability to decipher coded messages. The devices that were able to achieve this feat were the precursors to the modern computer. In 1946, the US Military developed the ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. Using over 17,000 vacuum tubes, the ENIAC was a few orders of magnitude faster than all previous electro-mechanical computers. The part that excited many scientists, however, was that it was programmable. It was the notion of a programmable computer that would give rise to the ai_05idea of artificial intelligence (AI).

As time marched forward, computers became smaller and faster. The invention of the transistor semiconductor gave rise to the microprocessor, which accelerated the development of computer programming. AI began to pick up steam, and pundits began to make grand claims of how computer intelligence would soon surpass our own. Programs like ELIZA and Blocks World fascinated the public and certainly gave the perception that when computers became faster, as they surely would in the future, they would be able to think like humans do.

But it soon became clear that this would not be the case. While these and many other AI programs were good at what they did, neither they, or their algorithms were adaptable. They were ‘smart’ at their particular task, and could even be considered intelligent judging from their behavior, but they had no understanding of the task, and didn’t hold a candle to the intellectual capabilities of even a typical lab rat, let alone a human.

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Beauty.AI Announces the First International Beauty Contest Judged by an Artificial Intelligence Jury

London, UK, November, 19, 2015 (PRWEB UK) 19 November 2015.

What matters in beauty is perception. Perception is how you and other people see you, and this perception is almost always biased. Still, healthy people look more attractive despite their age and nationality.

This has enabled the team of biogerontologists and data scientists, who believe that in the near future machines will be able to get a lot of vital medical information about people’s health by just processing their photos, to develop a set of algorithms that can accurately evaluate the criteria linked to perception of human beauty and health where it is most important – the human face. But evaluating beauty and health is not enough. The team’s challenge is to find effective ways to slow down ageing and help people look healthy and beautiful.

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No lens? No problem for FlatCam

How thin can a camera be? Very, say Rice University researchers who have developed patented prototypes of their technological breakthrough.

FlatCam, invented by the Rice labs of electrical and computer engineers Richard Baraniuk and Ashok Veeraraghavan, is little more than a thin with a mask that replaces lenses in a traditional camera.

Making it practical are the sophisticated computer algorithms that process what the sensor detects and converts the sensor measurements into images and videos.

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There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram

Old post,but interesting…

If the holographic principle does indeed describe our universe, it could help resolve many inconsistencies between relativistic physics and quantum physics, including the black hole information paradox. It would also offer researchers a way to solve some very tough quantum problems using relatively simple gravitational equations. But before we can be sure that we’re living in the Matrix, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“We did this calculation using 3D gravitational theory and 2D quantum field theory, but the universe actually has three spatial dimensions plus time,” Grumiller said. “A next step is to generalize these considerations to include one higher dimension. There are also many other quantities that should correspond between gravitational theory and quantum field theory, and examining these correspondences is ongoing work.”

Beyond the theoretical considerations, there’s the entirely different matter of pulling back the illusion and experimentally observing the holographic nature of reality. As it happens, physicists at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab are now trying to do just that.

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Bioengineered Shark Fins Could Save 70 Million Sharks

Each year, an estimated 70 million sharks are killed for their fins. The brutal shark finning process involves cutting off a live shark’s fins and returning the debilitated animal back into the water to die a slow death. Highly valued in traditional Asian medicine and cuisine, the fins can sell for as much as $300 a pound on the black market.

What if an artificial shark fin could remove sharks from the equation completely?

New Wave Foods, a San Francisco-based sustainable seafood company, is developing a bioengineered fin product that could pull the rug out from underneath the shark trade.

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David Eagleman: Can a Computer Simulate Consciousness?

Yes, conceivably. And if/when we achieve the levels of technology necessary for simulation, the universe will become our playground. Eagleman’s latest book is “The Brain: The Story of You” (http://goo.gl/2IgDRb).

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Transcript — The big picture in modern neuroscience is that you are the sum total of all the pieces and parts of your brain. It’s a vastly complicated network of neurons, almost 100 billion neurons, each of which has 10,000 connections to its neighbors. So we’re talking a thousand trillion neurons. It’s a system of such complexity that it bankrupts our language. But, fundamentally it’s only three pounds and we’ve got it cornered and it’s right there and it’s a physical system.

The computational hypothesis of brain function suggests that the physical wetware isn’t the stuff that matters. It’s what are the algorithms that are running on top of the wetware. In other words: What is the brain actually doing? What’s it implementing software-wise that matters? Hypothetically we should be able to take the physical stuff of the brain and reproduce what it’s doing. In other words, reproduce its software on other substrates. So we could take your brain and reproduce it out of beer cans and tennis balls and it would still run just fine. And if we said hey, “How are you feeling in there?” This beer can/tennis ball machine would say “Oh, I’m feeling fine. It’s a little cold, whatever.”

It’s also hypothetically a possibility that we could copy your brain and reproduce it in silica, which means on a computer at zeroes and ones, actually run the simulation of your brain. The challenges of reproducing a brain can’t be underestimated. It would take something like a zettabyte of computational capacity to run a simulation of a human brain. And that is the entire computational capacity of our planet right now.

There’s a lot of debate about whether we’ll get to a simulation of the human brain in 50 years or 500 years, but those would probably be the bounds. It’s going to happen somewhere in there. It opens up the whole universe for us because, you know, these meat puppets that we come to the table with aren’t any good for interstellar travel. But if we could, you know, put you on a flash drive or whatever the equivalent of that is a century from now and launch you into outer space and your consciousness could be there, that could get us to other solar systems and other galaxies. We will really be entering an era of post-humanism or trans-humanism at that point.

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Theory of a Mach Effect Thruster II

ABSTRACT

According to Einstein, General Relativity contains the essence of Mach’s ideas. Mach’s principle can be summarized by stating that the inertia of a body is determined by the rest of the mass-energy content of the universe. Inertia here arises from mass-energy there. The latter, was a statement made by John Wheeler in his 1995 book, Gravitation and Inertia, coauthored by Ciufolini. Einstein believed that to be fully Machian, gravity would need a radiative component, an action-at-a-dis- tance character, so that gravitational influences on a body from far away could be felt immediately. In 1960’s, Hoyle and Narlikar (HN) developed such a theory which was a gravitational version of the Absorber theory derived by Wheeler-Feynman for classical electrodynamics and later expanded upon by Davies and Narlikar for quantum electrodynamics. The HN-field equation has the same type of mass fluctuation terms as in the Woodward Mach effect thruster theory. The force equation, used to predict the thrust in our device, can be derived from the mass fluctuation. We outline a new method for deriving the force equation. We present new experimental tests of the thruster to show that the thrust seen in our device is not due to either heating or Dean Drive effects. Successful replications have been performed by groups in Austria and Canada, but their work is still pending in the peer review literature.

Keywords:

Mach Effect Drive, Transient Mass Fluctuations, Mach’s Principle, Action at a Distance, Advanced Waves, Event Horizon.

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