Shouldn't we be investing more in quantum computing? (by @azeem )

Exponential View #174 – Dept of quantum computing

BCG report

Given the large potential of quantum computing, the actual investment levels are low (with one exception, see at the end of this). We reckon, from a rough LinkedIn count, that fewer than 2,000 people are involved in companies working in any part of the quantum stack (and that includes all the marketing and PR types attached to these groups in large companies). IBM Q, which runs a developer ecosystem via the IBM Quantum Experience API, should have the deepest team. My scan on LinkedIn (far from perfect) shows only 300-or-so names attached to quantum computing in all of IBM. The startups are of similar scale, Rigetti, numbering less than 150. 

Some estimates go beyond this. There are 7,000 researchers working on quantum computing around the world, a more healthy but still small number, according to the European Commission. 

The venture dollars flowing intro quantum computing is small with D-Wave ($175m), Rigetti ($70m), Cambridge Quantum Computing ($50m) and IonQ ($20m) leading the pack. The European Commission further estimates that total global annual investment in quantum research is some €1.5bn per annum. (Deloitte has further estimates: suggesting that there is about $2.2bn investments globally by governments in quantum computing.) 

So quantum computing is Schrodinger’s opportunity, simultaneously here and not here at the same time. 

On the one hand, quantum computing is getting all the accoutrements of a technology close to maturity (press briefings, Gartner reports, analysis from investment banks and management consultancies) and the large tech firms are trumpeting working systems within 5 years. 

On the other, investment levels are tiny by the standards of what large companies can put to work, or what VCs invest (Wag, a dog-walking app, recently raised $300m.) This suggests that these smart investors are discounting the potential upside very heavily, i.e. there are many hurdles, which these investors cannot easily enumerate, to overcome or the time frame to realise is very long.
Which is it? Close to maturity or facing a long journey? 

…
Only two years ago, I was pretty sceptical about where quantum computing was in its cycle. And as Jerry Neumann points out, quantum computing was only “five years away” back in 2000, so quantum could be one of those technologies, like controllable fusion, that is always just around the corner.

Are nation states nearing their end as our preferred scale of the political and socio-economic organization?

 Global governance (amongst other interesting topics in exponential view newsletter #162)

Dept of states and sovereignty
There is a notion worth revisiting: are nation states nearing their end as our preferred scale of the political and socio-economic organization? This idea lies in contrast with the “end of history” theory of modernity. 

I’ve found the question of evolving the nation-state fascinating since the early 1990s when I first came across ideas of decentralized forms of organization enabled by new electronic networks (and was contemporaneously studying political institutions and models of governance).  

Of course, recently we've seen resurgent nationalism in Turkey, the US, Britain, Hungary and many other places. This might challenge the 'end of the nation-state' thesis, this nationalism is a sort of reversion to the mean. But could it, instead, be the febrile twitching that presages rigor mortis? 

Rana Dasgupta argues this compellingly: 20th-century political structures are drowning in a 21st-century ocean of deregulated finance, autonomous technology, religious militancy and great-power rivalry. Meanwhile, the suppressed consequences of 20th-century recklessness in the once-colonised world are erupting, cracking nations into fragments and forcing populations into post-national solidarities 

As I’ve argued in Exponential View and elsewhere, we increasingly need to adapt our existing institutions or invent new ones in order to cope with the changes in our economies, demographics, natural resources and climate. 

As Dasgputa concludes: “This is not a small endeavor: it will take the better part of this century. We do not know yet where it will lead.” 

One example is the relationship between the corporation and the states, and the balance between their power. Almost a decade ago my friend and researcher, Stephanie Hare, introduced me to the idea of ‘corporate foreign policy’, the notion that states needed to formally recognize that the emerging dominance of technology platforms merited a formal quasi-diplomatic status. Some years later, the forward-thinking Danes appointed Casper Klynge as the world’s first Technology Ambassador, in the vein first described to me by Stephanie several years earlier. 

In other cases, governments seem unwilling or incapable to execute on their duties - for example, maintaining their integrity in the face of or responses to cyber attacks (which are not really any different from other types of hostility). In those situations, private corporations are stepping in to fill or exploit the vacuum.

~@Azeem Azhar

How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Commerce (by @cbinsights )

 Retail’s Adapt-Or-Die Moment: How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Commerce
"Traditional and new-school retailers alike are using AI and robotics to automate various parts of the retail chain, from manufacturing to last-mile delivery."

Despite the rise of AI-based solutions, only a handful of traditional brands have been effectively implementing AI strategies to drive business efficiency. 

But AI is reshaping the retail workforce — from manufacturing to last-mile logistics — and players across the retail ecosystem will have to adapt to stay relevant. 

Tech giants like Alibaba and Amazon continue to push the boundaries, applying AI to retail and amassing massive consumer datasets. Recently, Alibaba announced that it is spending $15B on quantum computing, AI, and other technologies. 

Smaller startups are also seeing an opportunity here and seizing it. For example, Swedish startup Soundots recently raised $4M to democratize the “cashierless store” automation solution, helping retailers achieve something similar to Amazon’s Go stores.

How To Become A Centaur (by @ncasenmare)

 AIs are best at choosing answers. Humans are best at choosing questions.
via @mit_jods How To Become A Centaur by Nicky Case

…we’ve told ourselves that our relationship between ourselves and our AI is like a chess game: 

Zero-sum — one player’s win is another player’s loss.

…
They invited all kinds of contestants — supercomputers, human grandmasters, mixed teams of humans and AIs — to compete for a grand prize.²

Not surprisingly, a Human+AI Centaur beats the solo human. But — amazingly — a Human+AI Centaur also beats the solo computer.

This is because, contrary to unscientific internet IQ tests on clickbait websites, intelligence is not a single dimension. (The “g factor”, also known as “general intelligence”, only accounts for 30-50% of an individual’s performance on different cognitive tasks.³ So while it is an important dimension, it’s not the only dimension.) For example, human grandmasters are good at long-term chess strategy, but poor at seeing ahead for millions of possible moves — while the reverse is true for chess-playing AIs. And because humans & AIs are strong on different dimensions, together, as a centaur, they can beat out solo humans and computers alike.

…
Now, not only does pairing humans with AIs solve a technical problem — how to overcome the weaknesses of humans/AI with the strengths of AI/humans — it also solves that moral problem: how do we make sure AIs share our human goals and values?

And it’s simple: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

The rest of this essay will be about AI’s forgotten cousin, IA: Intelligence Augmentation. The old story of AI is about human brains working against silicon brains. The new story of IA will be about human brains working with silicon brains. As it turns out, most of the world is the opposite of a chess game:

Non-zero-sum — both players can win.

…I’ll show how humans are already working with AIs in various fields, from art to engineering. And finally, I’ll give some rough ideas on how you can design a good partnership with an AI — how to become a centaur. 

Together, humans and AI can go from “checkmate”, to “teammate”.

Over the next few decades, the wonders in The Mother of All Demos slowly reached the public. The personal computer gave ordinary people the power of computing, something only governments and big corporations could afford previously. A particle physics lab in Switzerland released a little thing called the “World Wide Web”, which let people share knowledge using things called “web pages”, and people could even create connections between pieces of knowledge using something called a “hyperlink”.

Steve Jobs once called the computer a bicycle for the mind. Note the metaphor of a bicycle, instead of a something like a car —a bicycle lets you go faster than the human body ever can, and yet, unlike the car, the bicycle is human-powered. (Also, the bicycle is healthier for you.) The strength of metal, with a human at its heart. A collaboration — a centaur.

Doug Engelbart envisioned that the computer would be a tool for intellectual and artistic creativity; now, our devices are designed less around creation, and more around consumption. Forget AI not sharing our values — even non-AI technology stopped supporting our values, and in some cases, actively subverts them.⁷

We hoped for a bicycle for the mind; we got a Lazy Boy recliner for the mind.

…

When you create a Human+AI team, the hard part isn’t the “AI”. It isn’t even the “Human”. 

It’s the “+”.

…

Human nature, for better or worse, doesn’t change much from millennia to millennia. If you want to see the strengths that are unique and universal to all humans, don’t look at the world-famous award-winners — look at children. Children, even at a young age, are already proficient at: intuition, analogy, creativity, empathy, social skills. Some may scoff at these for being “soft skills”, but the fact that we can make an AI that plays chess but not hold a normal five-minute conversation, is proof that these skills only seem “soft” to us because evolution’s already put in the 3.5 billion years of hard work for us.

And if you want to see the weaknesses of humans, go to school. This is the stuff that’s hard for human intelligences, and requires years of training to gain even a basic competency: arithmetic, computation, memory, logic, numeracy. Note that these are all things your phone can do better and faster than the smartest human alive. (And we wonder why kids feel school is meaningless…)

AIs choose answers. Humans choose questions. And given all the possibilities, the promises and pitfalls of technology in the coming decades, the next question for us humans to choose is:

What’s next?

Meanwhile, the story of IA has been one of a tragic fall. Starting out strong with Doug Engelbart’s Mother of All Demos, the idea of IA has slowly been forgotten, as technology shifted from tools for creation and more towards tools for consumption. Someone stole the wheels off the bicycle for our mind.

But now, these two story threads may be starting to wrap together, forming a new braid in history: AIA — Artificial Intelligence Augmentation.⁸ IA can give AI the human partnership it needs in order to remain aligned with our deepest goals and values. And in return, AI can give IA some new replacement wheels for the bicycle of our mind.

I’d like to tell you what the future holds. But if you tell someone something good is inevitable, it can cause self-defeating complacency — and if you tell someone something bad is inevitable, it can cause self-fulfilling despair.

Besides, answers are for AIs. As a human, you deserve questions.

Symbiosis shows us you can have fruitful collaborations even if you have different skills, or different goals, or are even different species.  Symbiosis shows us that the world often isn’t zero-sum — it doesn’t have to be humans versus AI, or humans versus centaurs, or humans versus other humans. Symbiosis is two individuals succeeding together not despite, but because of, their differences. Symbiosis is the “+”. 

A new chapter in humanity’s story is beginning, and we — living together — get to write what happens next.

The Coming Software Apocalypse

The serious problems that have happened with software have to do with requirements, not coding errors.
The Coming Software Apocalypse - The Atlantic

The programmer, the renowned Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra wrote in 1988, “has to be able to think in terms of conceptual hierarchies that are much deeper than a single mind ever needed to face before.” Dijkstra meant this as a warning. As programmers eagerly poured software into critical systems, they became, more and more, the linchpins of the built world—and Dijkstra thought they had perhaps overestimated themselves. 

“The problem is that software engineers don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve, and don’t care to,” says Leveson, the MIT software-safety expert. The reason is that they’re too wrapped up in getting their code to work. “Software engineers like to provide all kinds of tools and stuff for coding errors,” she says, referring to IDEs. “The serious problems that have happened with software have to do with requirements, not coding errors.” When you’re writing code that controls a car’s throttle, for instance, what’s important is the rules about when and how and by how much to open it. But these systems have become so complicated that hardly anyone can keep them straight in their head. “There’s 100 million lines of code in cars now,” Leveson says. “You just cannot anticipate all these things.” 

In a recent essay, Victor implored professional software developers to stop pouring their talent into tools for building apps like Snapchat and Uber. “The inconveniences of daily life are not the significant problems,” he wrote. Instead, they should focus on scientists and engineers—as he put it to me, “these people that are doing work that actually matters, and critically matters, and using really, really bad tools.” Exciting work of this sort, in particular a class of tools for “model-based design,” was already underway, he wrote, and had been for years, but most programmers knew nothing about it. 

“Human intuition is poor at estimating the true probability of supposedly ‘extremely rare’ combinations of events in systems operating at a scale of millions of requests per second,” he wrote in a paper. “That human fallibility means that some of the more subtle, dangerous bugs turn out to be errors in design; the code faithfully implements the intended design, but the design fails to correctly handle a particular ‘rare’ scenario.”

Cuando la carrera cobra más importancia que el destino

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; Tierra de los hombres, 1939

"El uso de una herramienta inteligente no te ha convertido en un aburrido técnico. Me parece que esos que tanto se espantan de nuestros progresos confunden el fin con los medios. En efecto, quien siembra con la única esperanza de lograr bienes materiales no logra nada por lo que valga la pena vivir.

La máquina no es un fin.

El avión no es un fin: es una herramienta. Una herramienta como el arado.

Si creemos que la máquina echa a perder al hombre es, tal vez, porque

nos falta un poco de perspectiva para poder emitir un juicio sobre las consecuencias de cambios tan rápidos como los que nos ha tocado vivir.

¿Qué son cien años de historia de la máquina frente a los doscientos mil años de historia del hombre? Acabamos de instalarnos en este paisaje de minas y centrales nucleares. Acabamos de mudarnos a esta nueva casa, que todavía no hemos ni siquiera terminado de edificar. A nuestro alrededor todo ha cambiado muy deprisa: relaciones humanas, condiciones de trabajo, costumbres. Hasta los fundamentos de nuestra psicología se han visto sacudidos. Las palabras separación, ausencia, distancia, regreso, aunque son las mismas, ya no remiten a las mismas realidades. Para aprehender el mundo de hoy usamos un lenguaje creado para el mundo de ayer, y nos parece que la vida del pasado se adecúa mejor a nuestra naturaleza porque responde mejor a nuestro lenguaje.

Cada progreso nos ha alejado un poco mas de unas costumbres que todavía no habíamos tenido tiempo de adquirir,

por lo que somos auténticos emigrantes que aun no han podido fundar su patria.

Todos somos como jóvenes ingenuos que se siguen asombrando frente a juguetes nuevos. Por eso competimos con los aviones: éste sube más alto, ése vuela más rápido. Olvidamos el motivo por el que los hacemos volar. 

La carrera cobra más importancia que el destino,

y siempre ocurre lo mismo. Para el infante del ejército colonizador que funda un imperio, el sentido de la vida es conquistar. El soldado desprecia al colono, pero ¿acaso esa conquista no se lleva a cabo para que el colono pueda afincarse? Del mismo modo, al exaltar nuestros progresos, nos servimos de los hombres para trazar vías férreas, para erigir fábricas, para perforar pozos de petróleo. Casi habíamos olvidado que hacíamos esas obras para que sirvieran a los hombres. Durante la conquista nuestra moral fue una moral de soldados, pero ahora tenemos que colonizar, tenemos que llenar de vida esta casa nueva, que todavía no tiene rostro. La verdad fue, para uno, edificar; la verdad es, para otro, habitar.

Así, poco a poco, nuestra casa se hará más humana. Incluso la máquina, cuanto más se perfecciona, más se difumina detrás de su función. Parece que todo el esfuerzo industrial del hombre, todos sus cálculos, todas las noches en vela encima de los planos, sólo conduzcan de modo visible a la sencillez. Parece que se necesite toda la experiencia de varias generaciones para perfilar lentamente la curva de una columna, de un casco de barco, de un fuselaje de avión, para lograr la pureza primigenia de un seno o de un hombro. Parece que el trabajo de los ingenieros, de los delineantes, de los analistas del centro de estudios, consiste, aparentemente, en borrar y pulir, en aligerar aquel empalme, equilibrar esta ala hasta que ya no se la note, hasta que ya no sea un ala incrustada en un fuselaje, sino una sola forma que, perfectamente lograda, se ha desprendido de su ganga; una forma que sea como un conjunto misteriosamente ensamblado, espontáneo como un poema.

Parece que la perfección se alcanza no ya cuando no queda nada por añadir, sino cuando no queda nada por suprimir. Al término de su evolución, la máquina se disimula.

De esta forma, la perfección del invento reside en la ausencia de invención. Y así como en el instrumento se ha ido borrando cualquier mecánica visible, por lo que disponemos de un objeto tan natural como un guijarro pulido por el mar, el manejo de la máquina, admirablemente, consigue que nos olvidemos de ella.

En otro tiempo teníamos que trabajar con un artefacto complicado. Actualmente nos olvidamos de que un motor gira. A fin de cuentas cumple con su función, la de girar, así como un corazón palpita y no por ello nos fijamos en el nuestro. 

La herramienta ya no absorbe nuestra atención, más allá de sí misma, y gracias a ella encontramos nuestra auténtica naturaleza,

la del jardinero, la del navegante o la del poeta."

How to Take a Full-Page Screenshot (with Chrome)

by @zapier How to Take a Full-Page Screenshot

Start by using the shortcut pairs below—enter the first shortcut, followed by the second—depending on your operating system:
On Mac1. Alt + Command + I2. Command + Shift + POn Windows/Linux/Chrome OS1. Ctrl + Shift + I2. Ctrl + Shift + PThese keyboard shortcuts will open Chrome's developer menu. Just type "screenshot" and you'll see the option appear to "capture full size screenshot." Simply select this and Chrome will automatically save a full-page screenshot to your Downloads folder!

One of eight working Apple 1 computers goes up for auction

vía @MacDailyNews price estimated between $190,000 and $320,000

The Apple I was the company’s very first product, originally manufactured by Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs’ garage — Wozniak has said that about 200 of the computers were built in total,” Cunningham reports. “Apple offered aggressive discounts on the Apple II for people who traded in their old Apple I computers, in part because Wozniak himself was the only person who could handle most support calls about it. Apple is said to have destroyed most of the boards that were traded in, making an already rare computer even rarer.”

Pennsylvania sues IBM over troubled $110M IT upgrade

 The Standish Group, drawing from a database of 50,000 development projects, has found that for development projects that exceed $100 million in labor costs, only 2% are successful, meaning on-time and within budget. 

Another 51% are considered challenged or over budget, behind schedule or didn't meet user expectations. 

The rest, 47%, are seen as outright failures, said Johnson.

Pennsylvania sues IBM over troubled $110M IT upgrade | Computerworld

Electronic Frontier Foundation – Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices and In the Cloud

Digital Privacy at the U.S. Border: Protecting the Data On Your Devices and In the Cloud | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Contents

• Download

• Executive Summary

• Part 1: Digital Privacy Guide for Travelers

• What is the Border?

• Risk Assessment Factors

• Factors About You

• Factors About Your Data and Devices

• Before You Arrive at the Border

• Talk to Your Employer

• Minimize the Data That You Carry Across the Border

• Protect What You Carry Over The Border

• Social Media and Online Accounts

• When You Are at the Border

• What to Expect

• Basic Rules for Everyone

• Try to Avoid Implicit "Consent"

• What Could Happen When You Comply With An Order?

• If You Comply With an Order, Should You State That It Is Under Protest?

• What Could Happen if You Refuse To Comply With an Order?

• Should You Attempt to Persuade the Agents to Withdraw Their Order?

• After You Leave the Border

• Make a Record of What Happened

• Change Your Passwords and Login Credentials

• Government Offices That May Help You

• Part 2: Constitutional Rights, Government Policies, and Privacy at the Border

• The Law of Border Searches and Seizures

• The Fourth Amendment at the Border: Digital Privacy

• The Default Constitutional Privacy Rule

• The Border Search Exception

• The Exception to the Exception: "Non-Routine" Searches

• Border Searches of Digital Devices

• Interior Checkpoints

• The First Amendment at the Border: Freedom to Privately Speak, Associate, Acquire Information, and Gather News

• The Fifth Amendment at the Border: Freedom From Self-Incrimination

• Passwords

• Fingerprints

• The First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment Intersection at the Border: Freedom From Discrimination

• Consent: Waiving Constitutional Rights at the Border

• What If You Are Not a U.S. Citizen?

• Federal Policies and Practices on Digital Searches

• Federal Agencies that Oversee the Border

• Device Search Policies

• Search

• Seizure

• Searching Social Media and Other Cloud Content Without Using Travelers' Devices

• Part 3: The Technology of Privacy Protection

• Encryption

• Understanding Weaker Screen-Lock or User Account Passwords

• Strong Full-Disk Storage Encryption

• Activating Encryption

• Choosing a Strong Password

• Do Not Forget Your Password

• Turn Off Your Device

• Secure Deletion and Forensics

• Some "Deleted" Information is Not Really Deleted

• Overview of Secure Deletion

• Built-In Factory Reset Features

• Wiping Hard Drives and Removable Media

• Individual File Secure Deletion

• Clearing Free Space

• Flash Media

• Encryption and Secure Deletion

• Cloud Storage

• The Role of Cloud Storage in a Border Data Protection Strategy

• Forensics

• Risks Associated with Cloud Storage

• Personal Cloud Storage

• More Elaborate Data Minimization Ideas

• Conclusion