Computing
Latest significant advancements in computing. Reporting on the far-reaching impacts of improvements within the realm of computing on society and humanity.
AI Uses Titan Supercomputer to Create Deep Neural Nets in Less Than a Day
You don’t have to dig too deeply into the archive of dystopian science fiction to uncover the horror that intelligent machines might unleash. The Matrix and The Terminator are probably the most well-known examples of self-replicating,...
New Plasmonic Device to Help the Internet Keep Growing and Getting Faster
The volume of data shuttled around the internet is growing unchecked, placing ever greater burdens on our communication infrastructure. But a new device that takes advantage of the unusual properties of plasmons could tackle...
IBM Just Simulated the Biggest Quantum Computer to Date—What That Means for the Field
Google was in poll position to win the race for quantum supremacy, the point at which a quantum computer can do things a conventional one can't. But IBM seems to have pulled the rug...
Is Quantum Computing an Existential Threat to Blockchain Technology?
Amid steep gains in value and wild headlines, it’s easy to forget cryptocurrencies and blockchain aren’t yet mainstream. Even so, fans of the technology believe blockchain has too much potential not to have a...
Tech Is Becoming Emotionally Intelligent, and It’s Big Business
Many people get frustrated with technology when it malfunctions or is counterintuitive. The last thing people might expect is for that same technology to pick up on their emotions and engage with them differently...
Can You Be Hacked by the World Around You?
You’ve probably been told it’s dangerous to open unexpected attachment files in your email—just like you shouldn’t open suspicious packages in your mailbox. But have you been warned against scanning unknown QR codes or...
New Photonic Synapses Mimic the Brain and Compute With Light
Computing with light and designing brain-inspired hardware are at the experimental fringes of technology research. But they both come with potentially enormous advantages, so a group of scientists has decided to combine them.
Neuromorphic computing...
Intel Jumps Into Brain-Like Computing With New Self-Learning Chip
The brain has long inspired the design of computers and their software. Now Intel has become the latest tech company to decide that mimicking the brain’s hardware could be the next stage in the...
What It Will Take for Quantum Computers to Turbocharge Machine Learning
Quantum computers could give the machine learning algorithms at the heart of modern artificial intelligence a dramatic speed up, but how far off are we? An international group of researchers has outlined the barriers...
Why Quantum Computers Will Be Exponentially Faster Than Digital Computers
Classical computers (like the one you may be reading this on) calculate using bits, or binary digits, which can have only one of two values, either 1 or 0. Quantum computers, however, calculate using...
Interfaces Are Killing Us: It’s Time Technology Gets Out of the Way
You have superpowers; cybernetic superpowers that allow you to do all kinds of things.
Think about it: at some point today you Googled a fact you didn’t know, or your calendar reminded you to be...
How the Intelligent Home of the Future Will Care For You
As Dorothy famously said in The Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home. Home is where we go to rest and recharge. It’s familiar, comfortable, and our own. We take care of our...
How to Make Your First Chatbot With the Help of Game of Thrones
You’re probably wondering what Game of Thrones has to do with chatbots and artificial intelligence. Before I explain this weird connection, I need to warn you that this article may contain some serious spoilers....
Machine Learning Is Everywhere, But What Is It Exactly?
From Google’s language translation app to autonomous cars, machine learning has become a key ingredient in multiple areas of our lives—but what exactly is it?
In the simplest sense, machine learning is a method of...
How to Store Data on Magnets the Size of a Single Atom
There is an adage that says that data will expand to fill all available capacity. Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago, it was common to stockpile software programs, MP3 music, films, and other files,...
Tech-X-Planations | Introducing a New Original Weekly Video Series
We’ve all name-dropped a new technology that sounds awesome—like CRISPR/Cas9—without really knowing the basics.
This is why we’ve created Tech-x-planations, Singularity Hub’s new weekly video series that explores fundamental ideas in science, technology, and the...
These 7 Forces Are Changing the World at an Extraordinary Rate
It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who first said, “The only thing that is constant is change.”
He was onto something. But even he would likely be left speechless at the scale and pace of...
This Free Online Tool Helps Strip the Jargon Out of Science Writing
Science and technology have a profound impact on everyone’s life, but the dense jargon experts use to talk about them make it hard for laypeople to get a grip on these fields. Now a...
Why It’s Taking Less and Less to Manufacture More of the Things We Want
Manufacturing productivity has been on a tear. It’s nearly doubled versus construction productivity over the last couple decades.
Ever wonder why? I do. And at the heart of the answer is the increasing use of...
The Age of Cyborgs Has Arrived
How many cyborgs did you see during your morning commute today? I would guess at least five. Did they make you nervous? Probably not; you likely didn’t even realize they were there.
In a presentation...
The Biggest Facial Recognition System in the World Is Rolling Out in China
Facial recognition is set to have a significant impact on our society as a whole.
While many consumers are familiar with the concept because of the many smartphone apps that let them add various filters,...
How Robots Are Getting Better at Making Sense of the World
The multiverse of science fiction is populated by robots that are indistinguishable from humans. They are usually smarter, faster, and stronger than us. They seem capable of doing any job imaginable, from piloting a...
Teaching Machines to Understand, and Summarize, Text
We humans are swamped with text. It’s not just news and other timely information: Regular people are drowning in legal documents. The problem is so bad we mostly ignore it. Every time a person...
Machine Reasoning Gets a Boost With This Simple New Algorithm
There’s a classic scene in almost every police procedural: a weathered detective stands staring at a collection of photos pinned to a wall. Thin, red yarn traces the connections between the different players. Something’s...
Ray Kurzweil: Our Brain Is a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, thinker, and futurist famous for forecasting the pace of technology and predicting the world of tomorrow. In this video, Kurzweil suggests the blueprint for the master algorithm—or a single,...
6 Things Quantum Computers Will Be Incredibly Useful For
Computers don’t exist in a vacuum. They serve to solve problems, and the type of problems they can solve are influenced by their hardware. Graphics processors are specialized for rendering images; artificial intelligence processors...
Is There a Multidimensional Mathematical World Hidden in the Brain’s Computation?
Two thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks looked into the night sky and saw geometric shapes emerge among the stars: a hunter, a lion, a water vase.
In a way, they used these constellations to...
Deep Learning at the Speed of Light on Nanophotonic Chips
Deep learning has transformed the field of artificial intelligence, but the limitations of conventional computer hardware are already hindering progress. Researchers at MIT think their new “nanophotonic” processor could be the answer by carrying...
Why Interstellar Travel Will Be Possible Sooner Than You Think
The term “moonshot” is sometimes invoked to denote a project so outrageously ambitious that it can only be described by comparing it to the Apollo 11 mission to land the first human on the...
Forget Police Sketches: Researchers Perfectly Reconstruct Faces by Reading Brainwaves
Picture this: you’re sitting in a police interrogation room, struggling to describe the face of a criminal to a sketch artist. You pause, wrinkling your brow, trying to remember the distance between his eyes...
Quantum Computers Will Analyze Every Financial Model at Once
In the movie Office Space, Peter Gibbons has a stroke of genius. Confronted with the utter mundanity of a life slaving away at his office park software company, he convinces his friends to make...
7 Big Tech Trends That Are Changing the Way We Make Things
Manufacturing is dirty, dull, and outmoded. It’s a slow-moving industry stuck in the past as new technologies out of Silicon Valley threaten to upend it. Stereotypes are fun, and misleading.
Let’s not forget manufacturing is...
How to Build a Mind? This Theory May Guide Us Toward an Answer
How do intelligent minds learn?
Consider a toddler navigating her day, bombarded by a kaleidoscope of experiences. How does her mind discover what’s normal happenstance and begin building a model of the world? How does...
The Next Great Computer Interface Is Emerging—But It Doesn’t Have a Name Yet
Not long ago, your parents might’ve noticed a kid staring at a smartphone in their front yard. There wasn’t anything there. The kid was just…hanging out. What they didn’t know? Said kid was gazing...
Quantum Computing Demands a Whole New Kind of Programmer
Quantum computers finally seem to be coming of age with promises of “quantum supremacy” by the end of the year. But there’s a problem—very few people know how to work them.
The bold claim of achieving...
Cybersecurity Pros Will Soon Patrol Computer Networks Like Agents in ‘The Matrix’
Security analysts could soon become the first employees asked to show up to work inside virtual reality.
Thanks to a new virtual reality tool built by the Colorado-based startup ProtectWise, cybersecurity professionals may soon be...
Google Says Machine Learning Chips Make AI Faster and More Efficient
Google recently bared the inner workings of its dedicated machine learning chip, the TPU, marking the latest skirmish in the arms race for AI hardware supremacy.
Shorthand for Tensor Processing Unit, the chip has been...
Quantum Cryptography Is Unbreakable. So Is Human Ingenuity
Two basic types of encryption schemes are used on the internet today. One, known as symmetric-key cryptography, follows the same pattern that people have been using to send secret messages for thousands of years....
Ghost in the Shell Thrills, But Ducks the Philosophical Questions Posed by a Cyborg Future
How closely will we live with the technology we use in the future? How will it change us? And how close is “close”? Ghost in the Shell imagines a futuristic, hi-tech but grimy and...
This Is What Makes Quantum Computers Powerful Problem Solvers
In a previous article, I introduced the recent open-sourcing of quantum computing software by DWave. DWave is the maker of a quantum computer being used and studied by a number of groups, including NASA...
The Weird World of Cyborg Animals Is Here
Roboticists frequently turn to nature for inspiration for their inventions, reverse engineering the traits that evolution has developed over millennia. Others are taking a shortcut by simply integrating modern technology with living animals.
The idea...
Is the Brain More Powerful Than We Thought? Here Comes the Science
If you’ve ever played around with an old music amplifier, you probably know what a firing neuron sounds like.
A sudden burst of static? Check. A rapid string of pops, like hundreds of bursting balloons?...
New Artificial Synapse Bridges the Gap to Brain-Like Computers
From AlphaGo’s historic victory against world champion Lee Sedol to DeepStack’s sweeping win against professional poker players, artificial intelligence is clearly on a roll.
Part of the momentum comes from breakthroughs in artificial neural networks,...
Are We Ready for Cyborgs? The Tech Is on Its Way
Are we ready for cyborgs? More specifically, people with implants that enhance beyond the superficially cosmetic and into the realms of evolved beings?
Jorge Pelegrín-Borondo (Universidad de La Rioja), Eva Reinares-Lara (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)...
Why the Potential of Augmented Reality Is Greater Than You Think
Never before have businesses been able to build billion-dollar valuations in so little time. Never before have incumbent enterprises been able to go out of business so quickly. Disruption is now commonplace, and augmented...
Hacking Our Smart Devices Is Way Too Easy—Here’s How to Fix That
Smart-television maker Vizio agreed to pay a penalty this month for spying on 11 million customers. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the company captured second-by-second information on what customers viewed, combined it with their gender, age...
Financial Leaders: Make Your Mark on the Future at Exponential Finance
From digital currency to machine learning, the financial industry is being rocked by exponential technologies. Blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, quantum computing, crowdfunding, and computing systems are allowing startups to solve consumer needs...
Holograms Aren’t The Stuff of Science Fiction Anymore
The world seems to be full of illusions—and we’re not talking about fake news from Macedonia.
Holograms appear to be all around us now. Long-dead rapper Tupac Shakur showed up at the 2012 edition of...
Physicists Unveil Blueprint for a Quantum Computer the Size of a Soccer Field
Quantum computers promise to crack some of the world’s most intractable problems by super-charging processing power. But the technical challenges involved in building these machines mean they’ve still achieved just a fraction of what...
When Electronic Witnesses Are Everywhere, No Secret’s Safe
On November 22, 2015, Victor Collins was found dead in the hot tub of his co-worker, James Andrew Bates. In the investigation that followed, Bates pleaded innocent but in February was charged with first-degree...
