Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: government

Glad that the author is highlighting the need for investment; however, the US government has had a quantum network since 1991. Wall Street, various overseas banks, ISPs, etc. well over a year to 2 years ago. And, tech has invested in QC for a decade or longer. So, the article raises the need for investing in QC; however, the investing is no longer experimental as it is now about the daily usage of this technology as well as planning for technical transformation that is coming in the next 5 to 7 years.

Researchers led by Lockheed Martin and IBM are pushing quantum computing prototypes and military applications.

Read more

More folks warning others that you better be planning for a QC transformation as it is coming and is going to be probably the largest scale transformation the we have seen in the history of technology.

Former communications minister, Stephen Conroy has warned that Australian government technology decision makers need to start preparing for the development of quantum computing.

The former senator made the warning during a panel session at the Australian Computer Society’s Reimagination conference late last week. While still in its nascent development stages, the former minister for broadband communications and the digital economy said that it could have major national security implications.

“There’s one other issue that I wanted to put out there that’s coming as a disruptor and that’s quantum computing and how that’s going to affect things like national security and industrial competitiveness,” Mr Conroy said.

Read more

Hmmmm.

Sam Gussman arrived four years ago at Stanford University hoping to eventually parlay an engineering degree into a product manager job at Google or Facebook.

Working for the National Security Agency or other intelligence bureaus never crossed his mind. For Gussman, the government didn’t seem like the place for the most exciting, cutting-edge research in human computer interaction — his area of interest. Plus, it did no on-campus recruiting, unlike the many tech startups that e-mailed him daily about job opportunities and happy hours.

That career plan changed dramatically after Gussman took a new graduate class at Stanford’s engineering school called Hacking for Defense, or H4D, where he got to tackle real-life national security challenges. There he met with U.S. military officers and studied the mental duress soldiers face during combat and then worked on software that distinguishes insurgents from civilians in video feeds from drones. Suddenly government work was “super cool.”

Read more

In Brief

  • Last week’s US Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness focused on the impact AI has in various sectors of US society.
  • Scientists predict that investments in AI will increase by more than 300 percent over the next few years, meaning AI will have a more prominent role in society.

Senator Ted Cruz opened up last Wednesday’s hearing by the US Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness with a description of the changing landscape of technology: “Whether we recognize it or not, artificial intelligence is already seeping into our daily lives.”

Senator Cruz explained that scientists are predicting how investments in AI will increase by more than 300 percent in the next few years, which means AI will have a more prominent role in society. With that in mind, the subcommittee’s hearing focused on the impact AI has in various sectors of US society, and how to best ensure US leadership in AI development.

Read more

AI (someday once things are more secured) is going to drastically reduce our cost of government. At least the VA believes AI is going to make them better at treating folks; my guess it’s a mix of cost saving potential via automation and improving diagnosis.

Flow Health and the VA are building a medical knowledge graph with deep learning to inform medical decision-making and train AI to personalize care plans.

Read more

The first thing I learned about Cozmo is that it doesn’t like to stay put very long. Roused from slumber, the little robot’s face illuminates, and it begins zooming around the table in front of me. A moment later, it notices I’m watching and turns to greet me, saying my name with a computerized chirp.

Cozmo, which came out on Oct. 17, is the latest toy from six-year-old San Francisco startup Anki. It’s also an attempt to bring the burgeoning fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to consumers. While companies large and small work on both, applications tend to be in high-end computing, defense and government. Anki is betting toys will give the technologies a foothold at home. And Gartner predicts sales of such smart toys will grow, globally, from 8 million units this year to 421 million by 2020.

Toymakers have been cramming circuit boards and wireless chips into their products for years. Mattel and Hasbro, for example, sell high-tech versions of classics Barbie and Furby. But toys like Cozmo differ in the way they interact with the people and objects around them, changing their behavior over time as their software “learns.” Right out of the box, cameras and sensors allow Cozmo to recognize individuals, avoid falls or bumping into obstacles and play simple games like keep-away. But Anki says it will evolve; in December it will be able to recognize pets and learn new words. “Every input trigger, no matter what happens to him, will influence his future behavior,” says Hanns Tappeiner, Anki’s president.

Read more

What could once only be imagined in science fiction is now increasingly coming to fruition: Drones can be flown by human brains’ thoughts. Pharmaceuticals can help soldiers forget traumatic experiences or produce feelings of trust to encourage confession in interrogation. DARPA-funded research is working on everything from implanting brain chips to “neural dust” in an effort to alleviate the effects of traumatic experience in war. Invisible microwave beams produced by military contractors and tested on U.S. prisoners can produce the sensation of burning at a distance.

What all these techniques and technologies have in common is that they’re recent neuroscientific breakthroughs propelled by military research within a broader context of rapid neuroscientific development, driven by massive government-funded projects in both America and the European Union. Even while much about the brain remains mysterious, this research has contributed to the rapid and startling development of neuroscientific technology.

And while we might marvel at these developments, it is also undeniably true that this state of affairs raises significant ethical questions. What is the proper role – if any – of neuroscience in national defense or war efforts? My research addresses these questions in the broader context of looking at how international relations, and specifically warfare, are shaped by scientific and medical expertise and technology.

Read more

“The two options looked like going to work at NASA or going to work with a large corporation that was fulfilling space contracts with the government — a Boeing, a Lockheed or Northrup,” said the partner at San Francisco-based Founders Fund.

Then Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — SpaceX — and Nolan became its first intern in 2003. The internship turned into a full-time gig developing reusable Dragon capsules at SpaceX and working on rocket propulsion, giving Nolan — who now invests in space startups — a front-row seat for the “New Space” race.

Musk’s Southern California company, which raised $1 billion early this year from Google and others at a $10 billion valuation, dramatically cut the cost of launching a space mission from $1 billion down to tens of millions.

Read more

Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has finalized a 25 million euro agreement that includes direct capital investment of 12 million euros and grants of 13 million euros from the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI). The funding will accelerate the company’s technical advancements with the aim of launching the first commercial asteroid prospecting mission by 2020.

Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 is equipped with the first commercially licensed mid-wave infrared imager, an essential tool for detecting water on asteroids. Two spacecraft are completed and will test this technology on orbit. Planetary Resources’ President & CEO Chris Lewicki and Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider pictured with the Arkyd 6 in Planetary Resources’ clean room facility in Redmond, Washington.

Core hardware and software technologies developed at Planetary Resources were tested on orbit last year. The company’s next mission, now undergoing final testing, will validate the thermographic sensor that will precisely measure temperature differences of objects on Earth. When deployed on future commercial asteroid prospecting missions, the sensor will acquire key data related to the presence of water and water-bearing minerals on asteroids. Obtaining and using these key resources in space promises to fast-track the development of off-planet economic activities as the commercial industry continues to accelerate.

Read more