Science And Technology News 17 June, 2015

Some people who realize what the road being taken by computer development is are getting worried and I must say I cannot blame them. When I hear what is coming down the road it does seem a bit worrisome. Steve Wozniak is the co-founder of Apple Computer and he was happy to share his thoughts on what is waiting for us in computer development. He felt the next big bump in computer development will be computers which can program themselves. He said, “Then if we say that computers can really think for themselves and program themselves, they can make themselves better faster than we can. They can come up with solutions to the real world faster than we can.” Why would this worry some of us? I think the answer is clear, once computers can program themselves and think for themselves we could be creating sentient life, or at the very least computers which eventually see us as in the way and inefficient. I know this sounds like the “Terminator” movie script, or even “I Robot”. The question is why would we want to give this power to an unpredictable machine?

Computer scientists will be glad to tell us there is nothing to worry about and they will probably say they have built in safeguards, but how many times have we been told this about other devices. I have a smart television which is rated at one of the best. While I was watching it the other night I realized I couldn’t turn up the sound and when I tried to turn it off nothing happened. I finally had to unplug it to have it reset. Sometimes the television goes on by itself. I am sure it was not designed to do any of these things and if I would have asked the designers of the set before I bought it if it would do any of these things they would have said these are ridiculous questions. I am trying to illustrate a point. If technology could guarantee perfection then we wouldn’t need test pilots. This may be a minor point, but if I call a company I would like to know if I am talking to a machine or human and I think this distinction will be lost.

Powering devices has always been a problem. Home users may not notice it much, but companies which need to put electronic devices in remote areas need to have a power source for them. A new type of surveillance has been developed and it has no physical connection to a power source making it more secure than others. It is only powered by the Wi-Fi signal it receives. While security is the main worry for these cameras, there is another advantage to powering the camera this way and it is saving on electricity. This will cut down costs of operation. This new method of power is not only for cameras, but will find its way into many other devices. There are also more thoughts about this and the main one is why waste all this Wi-Fi energy around us when we could gather it up and store it for later use. This idea is being explored. There is a problem which has to be overcome and it is Wi-Fi is broadcast in bursts so there are times when there is no or little signal. This was worked around with the camera by switching to other Wi-Fi broadcasts when the primary one was not sending a signal. In the future they may be able to store the energy so it can be drawn upon when needed.

Scientists believe they have a new resource and it is us. They are trying to figure out how to best utilize the wisdom of the crowd. There is a name for this project and it is human computation. They have used these systems before and they are impressed with them. Human computation has helped scientists figure out complex problems. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, human computation was used to figure out the best way to apply disaster relief. Scientists want to harness people on a global scale and it is felt if enough people are involved many problems will be solved. The system has been used with great success in various fields. Old ships logs have been translated quickly. One time people were asked to fold proteins in the most efficient way. The idea was to solve a problem in molecular biology. This project solved a problem which had puzzled scientists for decades and could lead to a way to cure AIDS. I guess if you ask enough people for a solution to a problem, someone may get it right.

There is something about a robot which fascinates most of us, but it is turning out robots could be the most dangerous things we ever invented. I know you are thinking about them eventually killing us, but this is not what I am talking about. The real danger comes from the fact they are taking our jobs. As robots improve they are replacing humans in the work place. There are those who say the manufacturing and designing of robots will create new jobs and to some extent this is true. The real problem is the amount of jobs lost is not equal to the new amount of jobs gained and things are continuing to get worse. Some experts are saying the robots and computers are the best thing since sliced bread, but others point to the danger of job loss. A report has come out of Oxford University from a study they conducted called, "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization.” It predicts 47% of jobs in the United States could be lost in the next one to two decades.

Speaking about robots, a new tiny origami bot can fold itself, get around obstacles, swim and then dissolve itself. A team from MIT and another from Technische Universitat in Germany developed the robot. The robot weighs merely 0.3 grams and can move at a speed of 4 cm per second. It is able to carry twice its weight, it can dig and push tiny objects. The scientists would like to develop one of these robots which could travel through our bodies delivering medicine to critical areas, do diagnosis and even perform surgery. They want to design it so it would be able to dissolve in the human body. Currently it needs acetone to dissolve it, but its magnet remains intact.

Quantum computers are getting closer to reality, but these devices will need some sort of error correction to work correctly. This will be needed to preserve the state required for the computations. The problem has been only limited measurements could be made of qubits and that code could correction only the number equal to the square root of the number of qubits measured. A new procedure will allow the correction of a specified fraction of a computer’s qubits. The fraction can be a large one. A qubit can equal 1, 0, or both at the same time.