Focus has been on AI-powered micro-cameras monitoring the world’s oceans to the graduation of quantum computers from the lab into the real world.
1. AI-powered robot microscopes will help clean up the world’s water supplies
Water shortage can affect up to a quarter of the world’s population by 2025. The behavior of such microscopic plankton can provide vital clues on everything from chemical pollution levels to temperature change.
Autonomous, robotic cameras have been indeed developed by IBM and powered by AI that has the potential to monitor the behavior in more detail than it has been possible earlier. Data from the cameras can rather be analyzed to give real-time insights into factors affecting water quality and life in our lakes and oceans.
There will be all sorts of problems with clean water in the future, and one knows there are micro-organisms in water.
Big Technology Innovations of 2018
2. Crypto-Anchors and blockchains to fight Counterfeiter
Nobody likes knockoffs – blockchain and crypto-anchors will thus help to crack down on counterfeiting as well as to ensure security in the food supply chain
In a global economy, goods to pass through several different sets of hands between the time of production and the end consumer. This does provide ample opportunity to tamper and indulge in theft problems which blockchain technology could also help to eliminate.
In order to for them to function, there is a need to have a tamper-proof link between the physical products and the digital records on the blockchain. This is where cryptocurrency trading-anchors do come in microscopic codes or identifiers which can indeed serve as “digital fingerprints” to ensure security at every stage of the journey.
3. Lattice cryptography will discourage even quantum-powered hackers
Complex algebraic structures are referred to as lattices that will become a valuable tool in the age of quantum computers. With more and more sensitive data being collected and stored online, security measures will indeed be required to keep pace with the growing capability of hackers, as virtually unlimited amounts of computing power become cheaper and also more available.
Lattice cryptography does involve encoding data within high-dimensional algebraic structures which even theoretical million-qubit quantum computers will find tough to crack. It also does open up the possibility of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which will also enable computers to operate on data while it is still in an encrypted state thus eliminating the security flaw inherent in existing systems whereby data has to be decrypted (and thus made vulnerable to hackers) in order to be processed.
4. AI bias will explode, but only unbiased AI will survive
The most sophisticated AI systems are indeed good as the data they are trained on, and if that data has been collected in a biased or in a compromised way.
Devising new ways to monitor for bias, and also eliminate it at the source, are indeed keys to creating AI software which accurately reflects reality, rather than the biased human view of reality that AI promises to help us transcend.
AI systems trained in this manner to provide an unbiased, objective model of the world is indeed likely to be the most successful. This will enable us to tackle moral and ethical problems which are encountered by any industries or fields of research which are attempting to use AI to tackle social issues or even make decisions that will affect human lives.
5. Quantum computing will move from the research labs into the real world
Half a decade from now, quantum computing will become an essential element of any of the computer engineering degree say IBM researchers.
An understanding of quantum computing will be required in order to look for careers in any scientific field.
