Lifeboat Foundation

Primer Labs features examples that A.I. systems capable of natural language processing are poised to have a big impact on business.

Life-sciences companies have yet to realize the full potential of digital and analytics. Pioneers are finding success by focusing on entire parts of the business system rather than use case projects.

Humans will soon have new bodies that forever blur the line between the natural and synthetic worlds, says bionics designer Hugh Herr. In an unforgettable talk, he details “NeuroEmbodied Design,” a methodology for creating cyborg function that he’s developing at the MIT Media Lab, and shows us a future where we’ve augmented our bodies in a way that will redefine human potential — and, maybe, turn us into superheroes. “During the twilight years of this century, I believe humans will be unrecognizable in morphology and dynamics from what we are today,” Herr says. “Humanity will take flight and soar.”

Check out more TED Talks: http://www.ted.com

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OpenAI’s new language generator #GPT-3 is shockingly good—and completely mindless: https://bit.ly/3kphfsX

By Will Douglas Heavenarchive page from MIT Technolgy Review

#AI #MachineLearning #NeuralNetworks #DeepLearning

Continue reading “OpenAI’s new language generator GPT-3 is shockingly good—and completely mindless” »

Quantum computing requires meticulously prepared hardware and big budgets, but cloud-based solutions could make the technology available to broader business audiences Several tech giants are racing to achieve “quantum supremacy”, but reliability and consistency in quantum output is no simple trick Covid-19 has prompted some researchers to look at how quantum computing could mitigate future pandemics with scientific precision and speed Quantum computing (QC) has been theorized for decades and has evolved rapidly over the last few years. An escalation in spend and development has seen powerhouses IBM, Microsoft, and Google race for ‘quantum supremacy’ — whereby quantum reliably and consistently outperforms existing computers. But do quantum computers remain a sort of elitist vision of the future or are we on course for more financially and infrastructurally viable applications across industries?

Getting to grips with qubits How much do you know? Ordinary computers (even supercomputers) deploy bits, and these bits comprise of traditional binary code. Computer processes – like code – are made up of countless combinations of 0’s and 1’s. Quantum computers, however, are broken down into qubits. Qubits are capable of ‘superpositions’: effectively adopting both 1 and 0 simultaneously, or any space on the spectrum between these two formerly binary points. The key to a powerful, robust, and reliable quantum computer is more qubits. Every qubit added exponentially increases the processing capacity of the machine.

Qubits and the impact of the superposition give quantum computers the ability to process large datasets within seconds, doing what it would take humans decades to do. They can decode and deconstruct, hypothesize and validate, tackling problems of absurd complexity and dizzying magnitude — and can do so across many different industries.

Continue reading “The quantum state of play — cloud-based QCaaS and Covid-19” »

Our mindset is everything: what one person sees as a crisis, another person sees as opportunity.

The magnitude of economic and social disruption caused by COVID-19 (25% of small businesses have closed, bankruptcies are up 26%) means that many existing business models are being upended. In some cases, entire industries.

As an entrepreneur, you should be asking yourself: What challenges or problems can I solve? What are new digital business models I want to experiment with?

When Nanoracks was created a decade ago it became the first company in the world to own and market its own hardware on the International Space Station. In doing so it faced a number of philosophical challenges, in particular because the notion of a private company wanting to own research hardware, market the results and set its own prices was something of an alien concept for NASA at the time. Here, in an article based on his presentation at the Asgardia Space Science & Investment Conference (ASIC) in October, CEO Jeff Manber reflects on the company’s pioneering commercial journey and looks at challenges that lie in the future.

The business model of Nanoracks has essentially been to grow, not through increasing investment but by building increasingly more complex hardware. I like to think that we’re not actually in the hardware business but, in reality, we are — and it’s where we have found a niche in the market.

Ten years ago, when we started with Nanolabs, it was the first time that miniature (10 × 10 × 10 cm) space laboratories had been standardised. I made a decision right at the start not to patent the Nanolab and its power frame because I wanted to create an ecosystem. Today, we are competing with ICE Cubes (a public-private partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Belgium-based Space Applications Services) and Space Tango (a Kentucky, USA-based company that builds research and manufacturing systems into compact smart containers, called CubeLabs, installed in hubs on the International Space Station (ISS). We want to see the market develop and so, as much as possible, we try not to patent. However, at the same time, we believe we’ll be better at getting the customers and building the market.

Honeywell’s quantum computer is ready for companies eager to find out what will be the impact of the next era of computing on their business.

MicroStrategy confirms it has made Bitcoin its primary treasury reserve asset as institutional uptake takes a dramatic bullish step forward.

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