What's up next for quantum computing? Possibly weather forecasting and online dating.

Dan Patterson, a Senior Producer for CBS News and CNET, interviewed futurist Isaac Arthur about what's next for quantum computing. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Isaac Arthur: It's always hard to guess with computers, and we're a little bit spoiled by Moore's Law from the fifties and sixties just taking us from these really simple devices to what we have nowadays.

We do not want to make the same mistake we made with, for instance, nuclear fission and fusion where we got the development in 20 years and just assume the next one will get to us in another 20.

Quantum computing might be many decades before we see any real major progress, but at the moment, we have made quite a few major leaps and actually are doing some real calculations with this.

SEE:Managing AI and ML in the enterprise 2020 (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

We have a whole bunch of problems in terms of making it better, though. The biggest one is actually getting the right answer out of it. As an example, if we were using the random source before--let's say I locked somebody inside a quantum box with a phone book, and I told them, 'I want you to find a phone number, and if you call this correct phone number and here's the phone number in this book, someone's going to come by and let you out of this box.'

That person is then given a random number generator, and we shut the box, and they search. A whole bunch of different quantum ghosts of them appear, searching various pages, but the one who finds the right one calls that, and the person comes and opens the door. That's one example of a data extraction, though that would never work in actual reality because quantum doesn't do both on the macroscopic scale, but you can get errors from things like that.

First, imagine one of these quantum people searching that page didn't call the right number, but instead accidentally called a pizza delivery place that showed up and opened the door to deliver a pizza. Now, we have a wrong answer. We have things like this happen with quantum computing where we have an error, in terms of the data. We used to have this with normal computing too, but we solved it fairly early on.

This is probably going to be a lot harder to do, and in many ways, it's the hardest part other than actually keeping all of these protocols entangled. It's not just trying to keep one particle like this. We have to keep several thousand potentially--or millions--all entangled with each other simultaneously. This also allows them to be at just a hair above absolute zero temperature-wise. And then, of course, we have our third problem that has to be overcome, which is the software.

SEE: Augmented reality for business: Cheat sheet (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

All this runs on algorithms being had on class computers fed into these things, and those algorithms are the only way that we still have to do a lot of work on to improve them because we're not quite using the original pure algorithms like Shor's [algorithm], but ones we've had to adapt along the way. Those are kind of three areas--the software and the hardware areas are the ones that are going to really control limitations on advancing.

How much bigger can we make the entangled system? How well can we actually pull the right answer, and how do we actually get the right algorithms to ask the right question, as well?

What we tend to think--you know, with the modern phone and the laptop--that this would be something you have at your home, that you'd have a quantum computer, but in fact you probably never actually have a quantum computer in someone's house. They have to be run at such very low temperatures. Even though they are very small devices in terms of the entanglement, there's so much associated equipment that isn't likely to get too miniaturized. Most likely, you would always have class computers, and people access it through the cloud, and you'd just buy time--or get time--on a quantum computer that you will link up to.

The thing that we're most likely--for one individual person to use, would probably be something like encryption, but for stuff that we would actually get to see on our computer would probably be stuff like weather forecasting, for instance. It has a lot of options to allow us to do way better weather forecasting than we do now.

There are a lot of other examples in terms of the science; there are great things. It might finally let us model how the lifestyle of abiogenesis in the deep oceans, which is one of those examples where our models can't really be. We have approximation algorithms that we use to cover these really huge numbers, but they don't really seem to be up to snuff for covering things like those chemical interactions in the early deep oceans, and then those same algorithms, ironically enough, would be the kind of things we'd use for dating services in terms of finding the most optimal match for a person based on not just a simplified number of traits.

We have to simplify traits, normally. Here, we could actually have a thousand different traits with a thousand different subtypes, and a quantum computer could actually match up and optimize all of those. And then of course, there's the possibility of using election modeling.

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Here's when we can expect the next major leap in quantum computing - TechRepublic

Sometimes youd be the only person in the world with this new piece of knowledge. Its a pretty wild feeling

Professor David Reilly

Its been said that quantum computing will be like going from candlelight to electric light in the way it will transform how we live. Quite a picture, but what exactly is quantum computing?

For the answer to that question, well have to visit a scale of existence so small that the usual rules of physics are warped, stretched and broken, and there are few layperson terms to lean on. Strap yourself in.

Luckily, we have a world-leading researcher in quantum computing, Professor David Reilly, to guide us. Most modern technologies are largely based on electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics, says Reilly in a meeting room at the Universitys Nano Hub. Quantum computing taps into an enormous new area of nano physics that we havent harnessed yet.

With his youthful looks and laid-back demeanour, Reilly isnt how you might picture a quantum physicist. He has five Fender guitars (with not much time to play them), and a weakness for single malt Scotches. That said, science has never been far below the surface. As a child, he would pull apart flashlights to see how they worked. During his PhD years, knowledge was more important than sleep; he often worked past 3am to finish experiments.

Sometimes youd be the only person in the world with this new piece of knowledge. Its a pretty wild feeling. A good place to start the quantum computing story is with the humble transistor, which is simply a switch that allows, blocks or varies the flow of electricity, or more correctly, electrons. Invented in 1947, it replaced the large, energy-hungry vacuum tubes in radios and amplifiers, also finding its way into computers.

This off/on gate effect of transistors is the origin of the zeroes and ones idea in traditional (aka classical) computers. Ever-shrinking transistors are also how computers have gone from room-filing monsters to tiny devices in our pockets currently, just one square millimetre of computer chip can hold 100 million transistors.

Incredible, yes, but also unsustainable. With transistors now operating at the size of atoms, they literally cant get much smaller, and theyre now at a scale where the different, nanoscale laws of physics are warping and compromising their usefulness. At that scale, an electron stops behaving like a ball being stopped by the transistor gate, Reilly says. Its more like a wave. It can actually tunnel through or teleport to the other side, so the on/off effect is lost.

Quantum computing seeks to solve this problem, but it also promises a great leap forward. Its based on the idea that transistors can be replaced by actual atomic particles where the zeros and ones arent predicated on the flow or non-flow of electrons, but on the property or energy state of the atomic particle itself.

These particles can come from various sources (and are usually engineered in nanoscale devices) but theyre called collectively, qubits. Now things get trickier. Yes, tricker. Where a transistor can be either one or zero, its a weird fact of quantum physics, that a qubit can be one or zero at the same time, like a spinning coin that holds the possibility of both heads and tails.

For a single qubit, this doubles the one-andzero mechanism. And for every qubit added, the one/zero combinations increase exponentially.

Continued here:

Quantum computing at the nanoscale - News - The University of Sydney

As the director of a global research organization, I feel obligated to use all the resources of cutting-edge science and technology at our disposal to fight this scourge. As a father, I want a lasting solution, one that serves not just in this crisis, but the next. And, as an American and a Spaniard, with family in two hot spots, I want to help. Its as simple as that.

It started with a phone call to the White House on Tuesday, March 17, one that proved to be a catalytic moment for industry, academia and government to act together. This was the same week I received news from my mother that my cousin in Spain had tested positive for coronavirus. Shes a doctor and, just like all medical staff around the world right now, is on the front lines of the fight against this disease. This fight is personal for so many of us.

COVID-19 is deadly serious. This respiratory disease is triggered by a virus from the family of coronaviruses, which was identified in the 1960s but had never made such an assault on humanity. The virus prevents its victims from breathing normally, making them gasp for air. Fever, cough, a sore throat and a feeling of overwhelming fatigue and helplessness follow. Lucky ones recover within a few days; some show only mild or moderately severe symptoms. But some patients are not that lucky. Bulldozing its way through the body, the virus makes the lungs fill up with fluid, and may lead to a rapid death. No one is immune. While the elderly and those with underlying health conditions are more at risk, COVID-19 has taken the lives of people of all ages, some in seemingly good health. The disease is bringing our world to its knees.

But we are resilient, and we are fighting back with all the tools we have, including some of the most sophisticated supercomputers we have ever built. These machinesmore than 25 U.S.-based supercomputers with more than 400 petaflops of computing powerare now available for free to scientists searching for a vaccine or treatment against the virus, through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium.

It was created with government, academia and industryincluding competitors, working side by side. IBM is co-leading the effort with the U.S. Department of Energy, which operates the National Laboratories of the United States. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have joined, as well as NASA, the National Science Foundation, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and six National LabsLawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Sandia, and others. And then there are academic institutions, including MIT; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; the University of Texas, Austin; and the University of California, San Diego.

The supercomputers will run a myriad of calculations in epidemiology, bioinformatics and molecular modeling, in a bid to drastically cut the time of discovery of new molecules that could lead to a vaccine. Having received proposals from all over the world, we have already reviewed, approved and matched 15 projects to the right supercomputers. More will follow.

But just a few days ago none of this existed.

On March 17, I called Michael Kratsios, the U.S. governments chief technology officer. Embracing the potential of a supercomputing consortium, he immediately started mobilizing his team, including Jake Taylor, assistant director for quantum information science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jake called major U.S. players that have high-performance computers and invited them on board. From the IBM side, Mike Rosenfield, whose team has designed and built multiple generations of world-leading supercomputers, partnered with RPI, MIT and the key computing leaders of the U.S. National Laboratories. The U.S. Department of Energy has been a partner from the very beginning, at the heart of it all.

Within 24 hours of that first call, collaborators outlined what it meant to be involved. We brainstormed how we would communicate to research labs worldwide what we could offer in terms of hardware, software and human experts, and how we would get them to submit proposals, and get those matched with just the right supercomputer.

Forty-eight hours passed. On Thursday, March 19, we set up the scientific review committee and the computing matching committee to manage proposals. At least one person from each of the members of the consortium had to be part of the process, all acting fairly and equally. From IBM, Ajay Royyuru joined the merit review committee; he is the leader of our Healthcare and Life Sciences research and together with his team has long been developing novel technologies to fight cancer and infectious diseases.

Ajay, too, has a personal stake in fighting back against COVID-19. In January, his elderly father passed away following a pulmonary illness. Ajay shares his house with his 82-year-old mother, and he worries about keeping her safe from this risk, just like so many of us worry about our parents. His extended family in India is now also confronting the unfolding of the pandemic.

On March 22, less than a week after the first discussion with Kratsios, the White House announced the consortium. Everyone knew that the clock was ticking.

It is still very early days, but Ajay and other reviewers can clearly see from the first wave of proposals that scientists are trying to attack the virus on all frontsfrom drug discovery and development with AI-led simulations to genomics, epidemiology and health systems response. We need to understand the whole life cycle of this virus, all the gearboxes that drive ithow it encounters and infects the host cell and replicates inside it, preventing it from producing vital particles. We need to know the molecular components, the proteins involved in the virus biochemistrythen to use computational modeling to see how we can interrupt the cycle. That's the standard scientific methodology of drug discovery, but we want to amplify it.

The virus has been exploding in humans for months now, providing an abundance of samples for computer modeling and analysis. Scientists are already depositing them into public data sources such as GenBank and Protein Data Bank. There are many unknowns and assumptionsbut, Ajay tells me, a lot of proposals involve using the available protein structures to try and come up with potential molecular compounds that could lead to a therapeutic or a vaccine.

Thats already happening. Even before we formed the consortium, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee simulated 8,000 compounds and found 77 molecules that could potentially disarm the virus. But 77 is still a big number and running tests to find the correct molecule may take months. Here, my colleague Alessandro Curioni, an Italian chemist who heads IBM Research Europe and who had to self-isolate due to possible exposure to COVID-19, had an idea on how to speed things up.

In a conversation with European Commission executives in early March, Alessandro learned about an Italian pharmaceutical company, Domp Farmaceutici and the E.U.-financed project they were working on. Last week, he orchestrated a meeting between its scientists and Oak Ridge, suggesting to both parties that they submit a joint proposal to the consortium. Perhaps together, with the help of supercomputers, they can reduce the number of the promising compounds from 77 to 10, five and, finally, one.

Humanity has more tools at its disposal in this pandemic than ever before. With data, supercomputers and artificial intelligence, and in the future, quantum computing, we will create an era of accelerated discovery. The consortium is an example of a unique partnership approach, and it shows that the bigger the challenge, the more we need each other.

Read more about the coronavirus outbreakhere.

Read this article:

Inside the Global Race to Fight COVID-19 Using the World's Fastest Supercomputers - Scientific American

Heading into this year, I was passionate about getting a very important message in front of investors.

It was my thesis that the next decade would not only be the most innovative in history, but that the stock market would experience its largest gains ever.

The start of 2020 as brutal as it has been reminds me of 1990. Stocks had already been in a bull market for eight years when the ball dropped on 1989 and ushered in the new decade. Most experts believed the bull market was over and that the 1990s would be a lost decade.

Boy, were they wrong.

The 1990s went on to become one of the greatest decades for stocks. Little technology companies youd never heard of became household names. Dell Computer now Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) gained over 91,000% during the 1990s. The biggest gains of the decade were driven by a plethora of new technologies centered around the internet and personal computing.

Today, we are now three months into the 2020s and stocks are in a similar situation. We entered the decade on the back of a 10-year bull market, only to slide quickly into a bear market.

Most people dont realize this, but the Dow did something similar in 1990. It fell by 19.5% essentially a bear market to start the decade before powering higher. I believe we will look back at the current sell-off and see it as the last great buying opportunity before a booming decade.

The selling is creating buying opportunities in investment trends that wont slow due to the pandemic. In fact, they could even accelerate due to the changing global landscape. Lets take a look at a few

Robotics:According to the editorial board atScience Robotics, robots could be an alternative to humans when it comes to certain healthcare tasks. Especially during a pandemic. Robots could collect lab results, automate lab tests, and help disinfect the patient rooms. In China, it was deemed too dangerous for humans to make critical deliveries of medicine and food into infected areas, so the country turned to robots.

Genomics:The future of healthcare will be based on advances in both technology and medicine. The latter will rely on the field of genomics. In the coming decade, it will be the norm to have your genome sequenced. This information will help create personalized medicine for each patient, as well as help speed up the creation of new drugs.

The response to the coronavirus is a great example of how medicine is evolving. In 10 years, this type of pandemic would not be an issue. The combination of artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and genomics would create a vaccine within days.

Tele-everything:The biggest change to our lives throughout this ordeal has been the self-isolation. Either through a government mandate or by choice, most people around the globe are staying inside and not going about their normal activities. This has led to a work-from-home, school-from-home, and even workout-from-home situation.

The companies behind this trend are here to stay. When the pandemic is over, people will go back to work, school, and their local fitness facilities. But the tele-everything trend is not going away. In some circumstances, it is more convenient than what we were accustomed to. Everything from software companies to one of my favorite stocks,Teladoc (NYSE:TDOC), to online education will be pushed to grow faster and quicker after the pandemic.

Even though a lot of the stocks in these trends have been beaten down in the last month, the trends themselves are not dead. Nothing I mean nothing in life goes straight up. When it comes to the stock market, the strongest trends will hit speed bumps but those bumps offer investors opportunities.

Let me be straight with you. If you want to be wealthy, you must buy into high-growth, long-term trends. And to make the BIG money you need to buy when everyone else is selling.

That day is today.

Matthew McCall left Wall Street to actually help investors by getting them into the worlds biggest, most revolutionary trends BEFORE anyone else. The power of being first gave Matts readers the chance to bank +2,438% in Stamps.com (STMP), +1,523% in Ulta Beauty (ULTA) and +1,044% in Tesla (TSLA), just to name a few. Click here to see what Matt has up his sleeve now. Matt does not directly own the aforementioned securities.

Link:

3 High-Growth Trends to Invest In Now - Investorplace.com

Design engineers' jobs are starting to look a lot different than just a decade ago.

Most of us likely engage in mechanical engineering design on a daily basis, but whats the future for this crucial field?

Since the invention of CAD software, mechanical design has been revolutionized to its core. However, there are quite a lot of things about the process that are rather rudimentary. We still have to manually input constraints for parts that may seem obvious.

We can still make one minor mistake that can corrupt our whole model. Software is becoming smarter and smarter, but for the most part, the mechanical engineer is still where the innovation and the skill lies. What happens though, when programs become generative; when the mechanical engineers office dissolves and design moves into the future? Lets take a deeper look. (Dont worry, youre still going to have a job.)

CAD programs, the foundation of mechanical design, were largely pushed forward by innovative code and programming. That has done wonders for the programs abilities, but it also means that CAD has evolved into a largely keyboard-oriented skill. Given that this is commonplace, you may not find anything odd about this fact.

What keyboard-based mechanical design does, however, is limit the designer to technical ability and knowledge of the specific software. There will always be a place for this, but computers will soon be able to allow freeform mechanical design within the confines of reality. This means that while, as engineers, we may be smart enough to input design constraints, we simply wont have to. It opens up the age for pure engineering.

The echoing of this future reality has already been occurring. The age of touch screen computers has brought more natural mechanical design interface. Moving forward, it will likely be virtual reality and quantum computing that brings mechanical design into its ultimate realization for the engineer.

RELATED: TOP 3 JOBS FOR THE HIGHEST MECHANICAL ENGINEERING SALARY

When you think about mechanical design as more of a skilled work form given the tools coming in the future, mechanical engineers may soon have more options of where and how we work. We wont be restricted to cubicles, rather we can be technical artists designing in virtual spaces or even on the job site imagine that.

Any engineer actively engaged in any technical field today feasibly understands how significant simulation has become in the modern design process. This stretches twofold, from simulations improved capability to provide us with practically useful data and its increased use in the design process. Fully appreciating this modern design tool change requires that we look deeper into the state of simulation integrated CAD.

Diving deeper into simulation in the modern design process grants us a better look at what might be to come for our daily life as engineers.

Simulations in terms of computer models like FEA in relation to CAE is a fairly new capability. Simulation simply defined as the use of predictive or practical models to prepare and access future designs dates back a little further. We can trace the desire for simulation essentially back to the beginning of engineering, but its modern usage began during the world wars and the space age. More refined simulation models were used in the Manhattan Project to model nuclear explosions and the design of the rockets used in the early space missions. Of course, all of this simulation was done on paper and involved discrete mathematics, Navier-Stokes equations, and finite element analysis, among many other formulas.

Diverging from the mathematical roots of simulation, physical simulation was also used in the design process of the Apollo landing capsules. Astronauts alongside engineers were used to test processes for launch, landing, and usage of all of the Apollo hardware. These simplistic hardware simulations are the early beginnings of simulation tools that allow for usagecases and event analysis. During the height of the space age, Simula-67, the first simulation-centric programming language was developed which lead the way for modern computer simulation software.

Since these early days where the mathematics of simulation was refined, simulation solidified into a vital tool for engineers.

In the last several years, simulation has been ingrained into our CAE tools, like our mechanical design software. Beyond simple case analysis capabilities, simulation in many senses now comes before design. This shifted workflow comes in the form of generative design tools and simulations use as a design aid. Rather than designing a part and then testing whether it will work, CAD-integrated simulation software like Nastran and Inventors shape generator tools allow for simulation before or alongside design. Generative design allows for simulation to create a design whereas analysis tools allow for testing of part design every step of the way.

The increasing utilization of simulation in modern part design is only natural, in fact, its primal to our drive as engineers. We innately seek to improve, innovate, optimize, and otherwise endeavor to design the best part/assembly/machine possible. Simulation tools and the development therein leverage themselves on our innate desire toknow.

Even with the current state of CAD integrated simulation tools, there are still hurdles to overcome and improvements to be made. The NAFEMS World Congress, theInternational Association for the Engineering Modelling, Analysis, and Simulation Community,recently recognizedmany areas needing improvement in simulation tools in their 2017 assembly. They cited the most prolific problems of current simulation tools reuse of knowledge, speed and model fidelity, and pre-design simulation. In other words, the ways that NAFEMS believes simulation tools need to improve are their abilities to capture and reapply learned knowledge from past analysis, the speed and fidelity of models (which will naturally improve with cloud implementation/increased processing power) and the ability for simulation to be usedbeforethe design process.

So, while the modern usage of simulation tools alongside CAD has improved and grown to a point that has far exceeded manys expectations, theres a long way to go before it is perfect. This means good things for us as engineers. If we want more abilities to simulate, chances are they are coming with improved technical infrastructure. Cloud implementation is so vital to the adoption of simulation because simulation by nature requires significant processing power. Cloud offsets this burden from the engineer to the cloud data center, making expansive simulation analysis possible for anyone, anywhere.

The future of simulation is now, but the innovation wont be over anytime soon.

Ultimately, the goal of advancing mechanical design is to replace the restricting confines of computer interface and let then engineer create in a pure form.

Diverging from the mechanical design interface, the industries that are most in need of mechanical design in the coming future are those like automotive and manufacturing. However, theres is a new budding industry that will require the skills of the best mechanical designers AI design. Artificially intelligent programs and machines will soon be doing a large part of the design of the future. First, they have to learn and be complemented by actual mechanical design engineers.

RELATED: CONCEPTS MECHANICAL ENGINEERS NEED TO UNDERSTAND

Dont worry about losing your job to robots just yet. The specific tasks of a design engineer will only transform with AI, not be eliminated. What AI and ultimately, generative design, will do to mechanical design is revolutionize just what is possible in our industry. The future is bright for the mechanical designer.

Read more:

What Lies In the Future of Mechanical Design Industry - Interesting Engineering

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To most of us, Elon Musk is the real-life embodiment of Tony Stark. He started from nothing more or less and now is a leader in some aspects of the tech world. He started small, with an archive of newspapers and magazines, and in no time he was in Space. Space X that is.

Now, Elon has decided to notably withdraw from operating Tesla and SpaceX, and move to the next big chapter in his life: Quantum Computing, a venture that has seen investments over 2 billion dollars in just the prior to these years.

So what is quantum computing? In a nutshell, if you network all the PCs on the planet right now, and put them to work, the resulting power would not be sufficient to run the complex calculation that a quantum computer can permutate.

Elon never announced his move on Twitter, and that made us wonder. He left SpaceX and Tesla for this? It must be a scam! And it was. One that wants data and personal info.

On top of that if some untrusted sources are to be believed, the project is LIVE right now,beating companies like Microsoft and IBM to the punchand delivering QuantumAI. Or how Elon puts it: A new way to redistributing the worlds wealth.

The scammers strongly believe that the 1% that controls 90% of the worlds financial capital can share and help normal people to grow in wealth by using quantum computing. This theory has been thrown around even in the times ofMoore, and it now seems to be a reality for everybody on Earth.

This time the greedy scammers have raised the bar. The scam group used real footage of Elon Musk talking about his companies, but they overimposed another audio, making sure to turn people to the fake QuantumAI investment platform and automated trading app.

The group responsible for masterminding this charade are part of a bigger affiliate network, and they specialize in social media advertising like Facebook and Twitter. These networks are operating in cooperation with rogue offshore brokers who are paying referral money for investing clients. You are the investing client in this case!

And the rabbit hole goes deeper. When you sign in, you are signed up for your broker, in this case, Crypto Kartal owned by Elmond Enterprise Ltd. A company that is located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as an office in Estonia where it is named Fukazawa Partnership OU. The QuantumAI scam is particularly shoddy because it practices an aggregate of two highly effective baiting systems: social media and video manipulation. And Facebook and Twitter are disseminating the message right now in some regions.

According to the scam, this iteration of QuantumAI hopes to make people 2 3 times wealthier, and no one, except the super-wealthy, will take a hit.

How do they do that? Well, the process is simpler than you can imagine. The wealthy keep their investments in bonds and stocks that they trade for a profit on the open market.

Here is the part where QuantumAI makes a power move that can affect the super-rich. The scam promises to beat Wall Street traders to the market, making winning trades before the brokers can react or intercept transactions. And with a quantum computer, you can do that! Well, as long as you have a working quantum computer that is!

Sounds super interesting right? But its a scam! All you need to do is do a Google back search of the pictures on the website and maybe, try to find out if the brokers invested in this enterprise had any scam or alerts in the past. Doubt anything, back search anything before you input any of your data, and on top of it all NEVER use your main email and password. Its safer to use a program or create a new one, just to be safe.

Be careful in these times. The Quantum AI Scam software, app, and fraudulent crypto trading platform by Elon Musk is completely blacklisted. But Facebook runs the adds with no remorse, the scammers switching between fake Guardian or CNN articles. So be aware!

See the article here:

1000 Words or So About The New QuantumAI Scam - TechTheLead

NEW YORK, April 1, 2020 ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, announced that David Silver is the recipient of the 2019 ACM Prize in Computing for breakthrough advances in computer game-playing. Silver is a Professor at University College London and a Principal Research Scientist at DeepMind, a Google-owned artificial intelligence company based in the United Kingdom. Silver is recognized as a central figure in the growing and impactful area of deep reinforcement learning.

Silvers most highly publicized achievement was leading the team that developed AlphaGo, a computer program that defeated the world champion of the game Go, a popular abstract board game. Silver developed the AlphaGo algorithm by deftly combining ideas from deep-learning, reinforcement-learning, traditional tree-search and large-scale computing. AlphaGo is recognized as a milestone in artificial intelligence (AI) research and was ranked byNew Scientistmagazine as one of the top 10 discoveries of the last decade.

AlphaGo was initialized by training on expert human games followed by reinforcement learning to improve its performance. Subsequently, Silver sought even more principled methods for achieving greater performance and generality. He developed the AlphaZero algorithm that learned entirely by playing games against itself, starting without any human data or prior knowledge except the game rules. AlphaZero achieved superhuman performance in the games of chess, Shogi, and Go, demonstrating unprecedented generality of the game-playing methods.

The ACM Prize in Computing recognizes early-to-mid-career computer scientists whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications. The award carries a prize of $250,000, from an endowment provided by Infosys Ltd. Silver will formally receive the ACM Prize at ACMs annual awards banquet on June 20, 2020 in San Francisco.

Computer Game-Playing and AI Teaching computer programs to play games, against humans or other computers, has been a central practice in AI research since the 1950s. Game playing, which requires an agent to make a series of decisions toward an objectivewinningis seen as a useful facsimile of human thought processes. Game-playing also affords researchers results that are easily quantifiablethat is, did the computer follow the rules, score points, and/or win the game?

At the dawn of the field, researchers developed programs to compete with humans at checkers, and over the decades, increasingly sophisticated chess programs were introduced. A watershed moment occurred in 1997, when ACM sponsored a tournament in which IBMs DeepBlue became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion, Gary Kasparov. At the same time, the objective of the researchers was not simply to develop programs to win games, but to use game-playing as a touchstone to develop machines with capacities that simulated human intelligence.

Few other researchers have generated as much excitement in the AI field as David Silver, said ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. Human vs. machine contests have long been a yardstick for AI. Millions ofpeople around the world watched as AlphaGo defeated the Go world champion, Lee Sedol, on television in March 2016. But that was just the beginning of Silvers impact. His insights into deep reinforcement learning are already being applied in areas such as improving the efficiency of the UKs power grid, reducing power consumption at Googles data centers, and planning the trajectories of space probes for the European Space Agency.

Infosys congratulates David Silver for his accomplishments in making foundational contributions to deep reinforcement learning and thus rapidly accelerating the state of the art in artificial intelligence, said Pravin Rao, COO of Infosys. When computers can defeat world champions at complex board games, it captures the public imagination and attracts young researchers to areas like machine learning. Importantly, the frameworks that Silver and his colleagues have developed will inform all areas of AI, as well as practical applications in business and industry for many years to come. Infosys is proud to provide financial support for the ACM Prize in Computing and to join with ACM in recognizing outstanding young computing professionals.

Silver is credited with being one of the foremost proponents of a new machine learning tool called deep reinforcement learning, in which the algorithm learns by trial-and-error in an interactive environment. The algorithm continually adjusts its actions based on the information it accumulates while it is running. In deep reinforcement learning, artificial neural networkscomputation models which use different layers of mathematical processingare effectively combined with the reinforcement learning strategies to evaluate the trial-and-error results. Instead of having to perform calculations of every possible outcome, the algorithm makes predictions leading to a more efficient execution of a given task.

Learning Atari from Scratch At the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference (NeurIPS) in 2013, Silver and his colleagues at DeepMind presented a program that could play 50 Atari games to human-level ability. The program learned to play the games based solely on observing the pixels and scores while playing. Earlier reinforcement learning approaches had not achieved anything close to this level of ability.

Silver and his colleagues published their method of combining reinforcement learning with artificial neural networks in a seminal 2015 paper, Human Level Control Through Deep Reinforcement Learning, which was published inNature. The paper has been cited nearly 10,000 times and has had an immense impact on the field. Subsequently, Silver and his colleagues continued to refine these deep reinforcement learning algorithms with novel techniques, and these algorithms remain among the most widely-used tools in machine learning.

AlphaGo The game of Go was invented in China 2,500 years ago and has remained popular, especially in Asia. Go is regarded as far more complex than chess, as there are vastly more potential moves a player can make, as well as many more ways a game can play out. Silver first began exploring the possibility of developing a computer program that could master Go when he was a PhD student at the University of Alberta, and it remained a continuing research interest.

Silvers key insight in developing AlphaGo was to combine deep neural networks with an algorithm used in computer game-playing called Monte Carlo Tree Search. One strength of Monte Carlo Tree Search is that, while pursuing the perceived best strategy in a game, the algorithm is also continually investigating other alternatives. AlphaGos defeat of world Go champion Lee Sedol in March 2016 was hailed as a milestone moment in AI. Silver and his colleagues published the foundational technology underpinning AlphaGo in the paper Mastering the Game of Go with Deep Neural Networks and Tree Search that was published inNaturein 2016.

AlphaGo Zero, AlphaZero and AlphaStar Silver and his team at DeepMind have continued to develop new algorithms that have significantly advanced the state of the art in computer game-playing and achieved results many in the field thought were not yet possible for AI systems. In developing the AlphaGo Zero algorithm, Silver and his collaborators demonstrated that it is possible for a program to master Go without any access to human expert games. The algorithm learns entirely by playing itself without any human data or prior knowledge, except the rules of the game and, in a further iteration, without even knowing the rules.

Later, the DeepMind teams AlphaZero also achieved superhuman performance in chess, Shogi, and Go. In chess, AlphaZero easily defeated world computer chess champion Stockfish, a high-performance program designed by grandmasters and chess programming experts. Just last year, the DeepMind team, led by Silver, developed AlphaStar, which mastered the multiple-player video game StarCraft II, which had been regarded as a stunningly hard challenge for AI learning systems.

The DeepMind team continues to advance these technologies and find applications for them. Among other initiatives, Google is exploring how to use deep reinforcement learning approaches to manage robotic machinery at factories.

Biographical Background David Silver is Lead of the Reinforcement Learning Research Group at DeepMind, and a Professor of Computer Science at University College London. DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, seeks to combine the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.

Silver earned Bachelors and Masters degrees from Cambridge University in 1997 and 2000, respectively. In 1998 he co-founded the video games company Elixir Studios, where he served as Chief Technology Officer and Lead Programmer. Silver returned to academia and earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Alberta in 2009. Silvers numerous honors include the Marvin Minksy Medal (2018) for outstanding achievements in artificial intelligence, the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal (2017) for outstanding contribution to UK engineering, and the Mensa Foundation Prize (2017) for best scientific discovery in the field of artificial intelligence.

About the ACM Prize in Computing

TheACM Prize in Computingrecognizes an early- to mid-career fundamental innovative contribution in computing that, through its depth, impact and broad implications, exemplifies the greatest achievements in the discipline. The award carries a prize of $250,000. Financial support is provided by an endowment from Infosys Ltd. The ACM Prize in Computing was previously known as the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences from 2007 through 2015. ACM Prize recipients are invited to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an annual networking event that brings together young researchers from around the world with recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award (computer science), the Abel Prize (mathematics), the Fields Medal (mathematics), and the Nevanlinna Prize (mathematics).

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the worlds largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the fields challenges. ACM strengthens the computing professions collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

About Infosys

Infosysis a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 46 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Source: ACM

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ACM Prize in Computing Awarded to AlphaGo Developer - HPCwire

Saturday, 4 April 2020 07:45

In 2011, he climbed to number 1. No one has moved him from the vantage point. Classic chess world championship since 2013, closed 2019 with the triple crown. The coronavirus crisis has left him, for now, without a challenge; but challenge blocking with an online lite tournament

LONDON, ENGLAND NOVEMBER 28: Current world champion Norwegian Magnus lt; HIT gt; Carlsen lt; / HIT gt; speaks to the media after beating his opponent, American Fabiano Caruana, and regain his World Chess Championship title, on November 28, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood / Getty Images) Castelao, sports Dan Kitwood WORLD

I have had a small cold for quite some time, but I have no reason to think that it is connected to the coronavirus. Magnus Carlsen (Tnsberg, Norway; November 30, 1990) attends THE WORLD from Oslo. He lives near the center of the city, where he is confined.

This forcefulness has a reason. Carlsen challenged the blockade with an internet lite tournament in which to face seven of the best chess players in the world. Broadcast by chess24.com from April 17, it has the largest prize pool on-line always: 250,000 dollars.

According to the criteria of

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Magnus Carlsen: "In my country the authorities reacted quickly and the situation is under control" - Sportsfinding

If you just retired last year, you were feeling pretty good about things: Stocks kept hitting all-time highs and your portfolio looked as if it could sustain a comfortable lifestyle for years. Or, based on the same set of assumptions, you decided this was the year to finally hang it up and were looking forward to spending time on the people and things you really love.

Oops.

For the third time in the past 20 years, the market has thrown investors, particularly retirees, a wicked curveball. The novel coronavirus and the draconian shutdowns that have come in its wake have sent the economy reeling and stocks plungingas much as a 34% decline in the S&P 500 from its February 19 all-time closing high.

Weve rallied from the lows but depending on how long the shutdowns lastand how much permanent damage is done to the economy---we still may not have seen the ultimate bear-market bottom.

Regardless, this is a retirees worst nightmare. Its the dreaded sequence of returns riskby retiring just when the market has tanked, retirees could lock in lower income for years. Thats particularly true if you had way too much invested in stock (80% or more of your holdings) in an effort to catch up. Now you may spend the rest of your life trying to catch up with where you were before.

As I wrote here previously, Americans near or at traditional retirement age hold on average roughly 50% in stock. Those people sustained 17% to 20% declines in their overall holdings, not counting any offsetting gains in bondholdings during this time. Thats bad but not disastrous, though the 56% loss the S&P 500 SPX, +7.03% incurred during the financial crisis walloped even conservative portfolios.

So, what do you do now? Retirement Weekly reached out to financial planners and weve culled what we regard as the best advice from 15 of them from across the country and present them here in two parts. Every single one of them, of course, advised people to get a financial plan. I agree, but since this is their livelihood and doesnt give specific advice to readers who dont have a plan, Ill mention that here and then move on.

Ill conclude with some of my own advice. Im not a certified financial planner but Ive invested and written about retirement for years and even got a retirement plan done for me. (Ill deal with financial planning in a future column.) But right now Ill yield the floor to the planners.

Everybody tells you this, and its almost always true, although I believe there are special circumstances under which it might make sense to sell some stock into bear market rallies. But heres what the planners say:

Stop! Do not make financial decisions based on emotions, says Thomas J. Duffy of Tinton Falls, N.J.

Dont make an emotional decisionbased on market conditions during a temporary crisis (or, conversely, during a period of temporary euphoria), writes Benjamin Simiskey of Katy, Texas.

Dont sell out of the market, says Zach Abrams of Cleveland, Ohio. Losses are only losses if you sell and realize them. Recouping losses once you sell is incredibly difficult.

Let me jump in and give an example here. Lets say you had a $500,000 retirement portfolio with $300,000 in equities, whose value fell by a third. That would leave you with $200,000 in equity value and a $400,000 portfolio value overall.

Lets also say you had 3,000 shares in a stock ETF selling at $100 at its peak. Those shares now sell for $66 each. If you keep them they would have to rise 50% for your equity holdings to reach their previous value (not counting stock dividends and reinvestment).

But if you sell, say, 1,000 shares and have 2,000 shares left at $66 each, youll raise $66,000 in cash and your remaining stockholdings will be worth $132,000. In this case, your stock ETF would have to rise 76% for that part of your holdings (including the cash you got from the sale) to reach its previous $300,000. And for much of that time youd have a lot less equity to provide growth to meet future living expenses. That could force you to tighten your belt much more than you expected.

But its not all gloomy. While the market downdraft has wounded investment portfolios, it doesnt need to be fatal to your retirement plans, writes Michael Hennessy of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But you only get one chance to retire right.

No pressure, folks: After giving you the donts in this part, next time well tell you what you can and should do now.

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Is this the retirement apocalypse? - MarketWatch

Expert advice for retirees during this financially tumultuous time. Buzz60

The new coronavirus outbreak and economic measures to contain it could have a significantly negative impact on retirement preparations for millions of Americans.

Account balances have been depleted by the stock market collapse. Many people now need to tap into their accounts to make ends meet. Others, facing layoffs or reduced hours, won't have the income to make investment contributions.

Still others, in their early 60s, will start taking Social Security benefits as soon as they can, locking in lower monthly payments for the rest of their lives.

But the fallout isn't entirely bad.

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The government has introduced several temporary changes that could help people shore up their finances and manage their retirement accounts more effectively.

Here's what is changing:

One change involves the required minimum distributions that investors normally must begin after reaching age 72 with Individual Retirement Accounts and some 401(k)-style plans.

Set on selling stocks amid the coronavirus crisis?Consult this checklist first

Under provisions of the new federal CARES Act, RMDs may be suspended for 2020 to help investors rebound from stock-market losses.

This is notable because those withdrawals would have been based on account balances as of Dec. 31, 2019, when the stock market was much higher.

The new one-year RMD waiver is a "huge help" for many seniors who had been facing taxes on higher account values, said Ed Slott, a certified public accountant and founder of IRAHelp.com.

"Now, clients can sit out a year and avoid the tax bill on their 2020 RMDs, if they wish," he said.

President Trump signs the CARES Act, providing $2.2 trillion in economic relief during the coronavirus pandemic. USA TODAY

Under the CARES Act, investors in workplace retirement plans and IRAs can withdraw up to a combined $100,000 in 2020, from all such accounts, without incurring the usual 10% early withdrawal penalty. The penalty normally applies for people under age 59 1/2 or 55 in some cases with 401(k)-style plans.

However, not everyone will get this break.

"The affected participant or IRA owner (including a spouse or dependent) would need to either be diagnosed with SARS-COV-2 or COVID-19 or experiencing adverse financial consequences as a result of an event," noted Fidelity in a commentary. These consequences include a layoff, furlough, reduced work hours, a lack of available child-care assistance or a business closing in the case of self-employed individuals.

Ordinary income taxes still apply on permanent distributions, but the impact may be spread evenly over three years. As an option, investors can repay some or all of the withdrawn money back into a retirement plan within three years to avoid the tax bill and rebuild their account balances.

"That's why this provision was put into the bill to help people get back on track for retirement," said Meghan Murphy, a Fidelity vice president for global thought leadership. "It's like a mortgage: What you get approved for might be much more than you need."

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In most 401(k) plans, employees can take out loans rather than making permanent withdrawals. Loans can be a tempting way to access cash quickly. Among the benefits: There's no lengthy application process, the interest you pay goes back into your account rather than to a bank and the transaction isn't included on your credit report.

Under the new CARES legislation, the amount employees may borrow from their 401(k) plans increases to $100,000 this year from $50,000 before (assuming there's at least that much in the account).

Many plans only allow employees to borrow up to a certain percentage of their balance, such as 50%, though that threshold is waived this year, Murphy said. Also, the legislation allows loan repayments to be delayed for one year.

Taking out a 401(k) loan isn't necessarily a great option. If the stock market rebounds while your money is out on loan, you could miss some juicy gains. And if you can't or don't repay a loan, the balance would be taxed and that 10% penalty might apply down the road.

Prior to the new coronavirus outbreak, relatively few 401(k) participants had taken out loans, including during the 2007-2009 recession, Murphy said. But the unprecedented pressures that now apply, including heightened health-care needs, could change that.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) is impacting the global economy and raising fears of a recession. What causes a recession and what are the signs? USA TODAY

Other retirement provisions

This year, the deadline for filing federal income-tax returns and paying taxes has been delayed from the normal April 15 date to July 15. Many states, including Arizona, have adopted the same schedule.

As one consequence, July 15, 2020, also becomes the deadline for making 2019 contributions retroactively to IRAs though not for workplace 401(k) plans. This isn't a huge benefit, as relatively few Americans max out their IRA contributions, but it's a modest advantage for those who do.

Also, the optional ability to make tax-free transfers from an IRA to help a favored charity has been retained. This provision remains open to seniors 70 1/2 or older. It has proved popular among some people who don't need to live off their withdrawals.

The new rule changes provide relief, or at least more flexibility, for workers and retirees with retirement accounts. Yet many employers, especially small businesses, might need assistance too, and they are eager to get it.

The American Retirement Association, which includes affiliates such as the Plan Sponsor Council of America,has asked the Treasury Department to amend regulations to give employers more flexibility during the new coronavirus outbreak, including the option of suspending matching-fund contributions they make to employee accounts.

Many businesses closed their offices or transitioned quickly to telecommuting, which hindered their ability to amend plans properly and provide notices to workers, meaning that matching-fund obligations continue, the American Retirement Association said in a letter to the Treasury.

Without a relaxing of these and other rules governing 401(k) programs, "The financial crisis facing employers might force them to terminate their plans rather than keeping them intact but partially frozen, until the business recovers," the letter warned.

The American Retirement Association and its member employers and financial-service companies don't want to see 401(k) plans scuttled, which they fear could be a disaster for the long-term goals of millions of people. Rather, they seek "breathing room" for hard-pressed 401(k) sponsors, allowing time for them to recover.

If that happens, many employees wouldn't receive matching funds, at least for a while.

Reach Wiles at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8616.

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New changes in law will help those near retirement and others weather coronavirus's financial storm - USA TODAY