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Rose’s Law for Quantum Computing highlights the new platforms sheer power to solve humanity’s and society’s most complex problems on, and off, Earth

When Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of the investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DJF) first met Geordie Rose, now CTO and former CEO of D-Wave back in 2002 he was struck by his ability to explain complex quantum physics and the “spooky” underpinnings of a new class of computing platform – Quantum Computing.

DFJ first invested in D-Wave in 2003, and Rose predicted that he would be able to demonstrate a two-bit quantum computer within 6 months – years, if not decades ahead of the competition and there was a certain precision to his predictions. With one bit under his belt, and a second coming, Rose went on to suggest that the number of qubits in a scalable quantum computing architecture should double every year. Sound familiar?

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Over the course of the next year, Finland is putting Universal Basic Income to the test. Thousands of individuals are going to be getting a basic income to trial (what could be) the economics of the future.

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views of Futurism or its affiliates.

Finland is about to launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of 2,000–3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approx. $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support. The pilot study, running for two years in 2017–2018, aims to assess whether basic income can help reduce poverty, social exclusion, and bureaucracy, while increasing the employment rate.

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The year was 2012, and IBM’s AI software Watson was in the midst of its heyday.

Watson beat two of Jeopardy’s all-time champions a year earlier in 2011, and the world was stunned. It was the first widespread and successful demonstration of a natural language processing computer of its class. Combined with the popularity of Jeopardy, Watson became an immediate mainstream icon.

Later in 2012, IBM announced one of the first major practical partnerships for Watson—a Cleveland Clinic collaboration to bring the system into medical training.

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Singularity: The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity) is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

Have you ever taken a look at the constantly accelerating world of technology and thought “what happens if these machines become more intelligent than us? Will they develop conscious thoughts and decide that we are inferior and wipe us out? Will they become our bff’s for being their creators? How come our jobs are rapidly being replaced by machines? What will be the role of humans if we are no longer the most intelligent beings? Is this at all even possible?”

I find these ideas interesting to think about and I think the notion of singularity is a possibility that should at least be considered. In this article I’m going to outline a few of the issues surrounding intelligent machines and advanced AI. As well as give some of my personal opinions about the topic.

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