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“Until now researchers have encoded and stabilized. We now show that we can compute as well.”

Researchers at QuTech—a collaboration between the TU Delft and TNO—have reached a milestone in quantum error correction. They have integrated high-fidelity operations on encoded quantum data with a scalable scheme for repeated data stabilization. The researchers report their findings in the December issue of Nature Physics.

Physical quantum bits, or qubits, are vulnerable to errors. These errors arise from various sources, including quantum decoherence, crosstalk, and imperfect calibration. Fortunately, the theory of quantum error correction stipulates the possibility to compute while synchronously protecting quantum data from such errors.

The world is an intricate web of interrelations, such that objects no longer have their own individual existence independent from other objects — like an endless game of quantum mirrors.

Interesting Engineering is a cutting edge, leading community designed for all lovers of engineering, technology and science.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developed a new 3D printing technique capable of producing nanoscale metal parts.

Based on an electrochemical approach, the process can be used to fabricate copper objects as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. For reference, an average human hair is around 3000x thicker at 75 microns.

According to the research team led by Dr Dmitry Momotenko, the new 3D printing technique has potential applications in microelectronics, sensor technology, and battery technology.

Tiktok kitchen will bring baked feta pasta and smash burgers right to your door.

The company plans to launch hundreds of restaurant delivery locations in 2022 to bring popular food to fans.

The largest indoor vegetable farm in Japan.

An indoor farm called Spread in Kameoka – west of Tokyo has been opened to eliminate the barrier of weather and meet the demand for fresh vegetables all year round. So every day, up to 21,000 lettuce plants are harvested to be shipped across Japan, all delivered to stores and supermarkets within 24 hours of leaving the farm.

A new approach to building the soft actuators, which drive the drones’ wings boosts the lift-to-weight ratio to 3.7 to 1.

A new scientific study says the universe may actually change its own laws of physics to achieve stability and evolution, called “The Autodidactic Universe.”

One of the most important issues in contemporary societies is the impact of automation and intelligent technologies on human work. Concerns with the impact of mechanization on jobs and unemployment go back centuries, at least since the late 1,500 ’ s, when Queen Elizabeth I turned down William Lee ’ s patent applications for an automated knitting machine for stockings because of fears that it might turn human knitters into paupers. ^[2] In 1936, an automotive industry manager at General Motors named D.L. Harder coined the term “automation” to refer to the automatic operation of machines in a factory setting. Ten years later, when he was a Vice President at Ford Motor company, he established an “Automation Department” which led to widespread usage of the term. ^[3]

The origins of intelligent automation trace back to US and British advances in fire-control radar for operating anti-aircraft guns to defend against German V-1 rockets and aircraft during World War II. After the war, these advances motivated the MIT mathematician Norbert Weiner to develop the concept of “cybernetics”, a theory of machines and their potential based on feedback loops, self-stabilizing systems, and the ability to autonomously lean and adapt behavior. ^[4] In parallel, the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence workshop was held in 1956 and is recognized as the founding event of artificial intelligence as a research field. ^[5]

Since that decade, workplace automation, cybernetic-inspired advanced feedback systems for both analogue and digital machines, and digital computing based artificial intelligence (together with the overall field of computer science) have advanced in parallel and co-mingled with one another. Additionally, opposing views of these developments have co-existed with one side highlighting the positive potential for more capable and intelligent machines to serve, benefit and elevate humanity, and the other side highlighting the negative possibilities and threats including mass unemployment, physical harm and loss of control. There has been a steady stream of studies from the 1950 ’ s to the present assessing the impacts of machine automation on the nature of work, jobs and employment, with each more recent study considering the capability enhancements of the newest generation of automated machines.

Who better to answer the pros and cons of artificial intelligence than an actual AI?

Students at Oxford’s Said Business School hosted an unusual debate about the ethics of facial recognition software, the problems of an AI arms race, and AI stock trading. The debate was unusual because it involved an AI participant, previously fed with a huge range of data such as the entire Wikipedia and plenty of news articles.

Continue reading “AI debates its own ethics at Oxford University, concludes the only way to be safe is ‘no AI at all’” »