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Researchers achieve quantum storage of entangled photons at telecom wavelengths in a crystal

Quantum technologies are currently maturing at a breath-taking pace. These technologies exploit principles of quantum mechanics in suitably engineered systems, with bright prospects such as boosting computational efficiencies or communication security well beyond what is possible with devices based on today’s ‘classical’ technologies.

As with classical devices, however, to realize their full potential, must be networked. In principle, this can be done using the fiber-optic networks employed for classical telecommunications. But practical implementation requires that the information encoded in can be reliably stored at the frequencies used in telecom networks—a capability that has not yet been fully demonstrated.

Writing in Nature Communications, the group of Prof. Xiao-Song Ma at Nanjing University reports record-long quantum storage at telecom wavelengths on a platform that can be deployed in extended networks, paving the way for practical large-scale quantum networks.

Quantum Computing Is Coming Faster Than You Think

It seems for every proponent for quantum computing there is also a detractor.


Given the amount of quantum computing investment, advancements, and activity, the industry is set for a dynamic change, similar to that caused by AI – increased performance, functionality, and intelligence. This also comes with the same challenges presented by AI, such as security, as outlined in the recent Quantum Safe Cryptography article. But just like AI, quantum computing is coming. You might say that quantum computing is where AI was in 2015, fascinating but not widely utilized. Fast forward just five years and AI was being integrated into almost every platform and application. In just five years, quantum computing could take computing and humanity to a new level of knowledge and understanding.

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The author and members of the Tirias Research staff do not hold equity positions in any of the companies mentioned. Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Tirias Research has consulted for IBM, Intel Microsoft, Nvidia, Toshiba, and companies throughout the quantum computing ecosystem.

IonQ Named to Fast Company’s Third Annual List of the Next Big Things in Tech

IonQ earns spot in the prestigious list of 119 innovative companies for innovation in quantum computing

COLLEGE PARK, Md., November 28, 2023 —(BUSINESS WIRE)— IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), an industry leader in quantum computing, today announced that it has been named to Fast Company’s third annual Next Big Things in Tech list, honoring technology breakthroughs that promise to shape the future of industries—from healthcare and security to artificial intelligence and data. This is IonQ’s first time appearing on the list.

“This recognition is not only a tremendous honor but a testament to the transformative impact and potential of our technology,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. “IonQ is committed to advancing quantum computing capabilities to drive technological breakthroughs and solve complex business problems across industries. This award fuels our drive to continue pushing boundaries and breaking barriers.”

AWS brings Amazon One palm-scanning authentication to the enterprise

It comes 3 years after Amazon debuted its ‘handy’ authentication service for consumers.

Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary AWS (Amazon Web Services) has lifted the lid on a new palm-scanning identity service that allows companies to authenticate people when entering physical premises.

The announcement comes as part of AWS’s annual Re: Invent conference, which is running in Las Vegas for the duration of this week.

Amazon One Enterprise, as the new service is called, builds on the company’s existing Amazon One offering which it debuted back in 2020 to enable biometric payments in Amazon’s own surveillance-powered cashierless stores. Visitors to Amazon Go stores can associate their payment card with their palm-print, allowing them to enter the store and complete their transaction by hovering their hand over a scanner.

Researchers achieve zero-knowledge proof based on device-independent quantum random number beacon

Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) is a cryptographic tool that allows for the verification of validity between mutually untrusted parties without disclosing additional information. Non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (NIZKP) is a variant of ZKP with the feature of not requiring multiple information exchanges. Therefore, NIZKP is widely used in the fields of digital signature, blockchain, and identity authentication.

Since it is difficult to implement a true random number generator, deterministic pseudorandom number algorithms are often used as a substitute. However, this method has potential security vulnerabilities. Therefore, how to obtain true random numbers has become the key to improving the security of NIZKP.

In a study published in PNAS, a research team led by Prof. Pan Jianwei and Prof. Zhang Qiang from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the collaborators, realized a set of random number beacon public services with device-independent quantum as entropy sources and post-quantum cryptography as identity authentication.

HDIAC Podcast — Weaponizing Brain Science: Neuroweapons — Part 1 of 2

https://www.hdiac.org/podcast/neuroweapons-part-1/

In part one of this two-part podcast, HDIAC analyst Mara Kiernan interviews Dr. James Giordano, a Professor in the department of Neurology and Biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center. The discussion begins with Dr. Giordano defining neuroweapons and explaining their applied technologies. He provides insight into the manner in which international weapons conventions govern the use neuroweapons and discusses the threats presented by neuroweapons in today’s environment. Dr. Giordano goes on to review the need for continuous monitoring, including his views regarding challenges and potential solutions for effectively understanding global developments in neuroweapon technologies.

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The Future Of AI Is At The Edge: Cloudflare Leads The Way

Cloudflare, the leading content delivery network and cloud security platform, wants to make AI accessible to developers.


While developers can use JavaScript to write AI inference code and deploy it to Cloudflare’s edge network, it is possible to invoke the models through a simple REST API using any language. This makes it easy to infuse generative AI into web, desktop and mobile applications that run in diverse environments.

In September 2023, Workers AI was initially launched with inference capabilities in seven cities. However, Cloudflare’s ambitious goal was to support Workers AI inference in 100 cities by the end of the year, with near-ubiquitous coverage by the end of 2024.

Cloudflare is one of the first CDN and edge network providers to enhance its edge network with AI capabilities through GPU-powered Workers AI, vector database and an AI Gateway for AI deployment management. Partnering with tech giants like Meta and Microsoft, it is offering a wide model catalog and ONNX Runtime optimization.

Will quantum cryptography soon be essential for IoT security?

As connectivity continues to expand and the number of devices on a network with it, IoT’s ambition of creating a world of connected things grows. Yet, with pros, comes the cons, and the flip side of this is the growing security challenges that come with it too.

Security has been a perennial concern for IoT since it’s utilisation beyond its use for basic functions like tallying the stock levels of a soda machine. However, for something of such interest to the industry, plans for standardisation remain allusive. Instead, piece meal plans to ensure different elements of security, like zero trust for identity and access management for devices on a network, or network segmentation for containing breaches, are undertaken by different companies according to their needs.

Yet with the advancement of technology, things like quantum computing pose a risk to classic cryptography methods which, among other things, ensures data privacy is secure when being transferred from device to device or even to the Cloud.

[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models

This is a 1 hour general-audience introduction to Large Language Models: the core technical component behind systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard. What they are, where they are headed, comparisons and analogies to present-day operating systems, and some of the security-related challenges of this new computing paradigm.
As of November 2023 (this field moves fast!).

Context: This video is based on the slides of a talk I gave recently at the AI Security Summit. The talk was not recorded but a lot of people came to me after and told me they liked it. Seeing as I had already put in one long weekend of work to make the slides, I decided to just tune them a bit, record this round 2 of the talk and upload it here on YouTube. Pardon the random background, that’s my hotel room during the thanksgiving break.

- Slides as PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pxx_ZI7O-Nwl7ZLNk5hI3WzAsTL…share_link (42MB)
- Slides. as Keynote: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FPUpFMiCkMRKPFjhi9MAhby68MH…share_link (140MB)

Chapters:
Part 1: LLMs.
00:00:00 Intro: Large Language Model (LLM) talk.
00:00:20 LLM Inference.
00:04:17 LLM Training.
00:08:58 LLM dreams.
00:11:22 How do they work?
00:14:14 Finetuning into an Assistant.
00:17:52 Summary so far.
00:21:05 Appendix: Comparisons, Labeling docs, RLHF, Synthetic data, Leaderboard.
Part 2: Future of LLMs.
00:25:43 LLM Scaling Laws.
00:27:43 Tool Use (Browser, Calculator, Interpreter, DALL-E)
00:33:32 Multimodality (Vision, Audio)
00:35:00 Thinking, System 1/2
00:38:02 Self-improvement, LLM AlphaGo.
00:40:45 LLM Customization, GPTs store.
00:42:15 LLM OS
Part 3: LLM Security.
00:45:43 LLM Security Intro.
00:46:14 Jailbreaks.
00:51:30 Prompt Injection.
00:56:23 Data poisoning.
00:58:37 LLM Security conclusions.
End.
00:59:23 Outro