Great Expectations

A few decades ago, we expected our computing devices to run a word processor, allow us to draw using MS Paint and for many years it was the device bought by geeks and ultra-rich. However, now our expectations are touching the sky and in future, it may escape the gravity of our imagination.

We are making our devices to understand us and even talk to us like a human being. Researchers are trying to make the computing devices ‘conscious’, although experts can debate forever what exactly being conscious is. They will learn like a small child and learn from their own and others mistake. Virtual assistants like Cortana and Siri by

Age of Artificial Intelligence and emerging computing models

Today, we are living in a time where artificial intelligence is gaining importance with every passing second. Instead of programming it to take decisions, the machine will learn from inputs and its own mistakes. There is no paucity of such inputs. For example, Amazon has huge amount of customer data about their preference of items they buy. No wonder, Amazon has also joined the AI party along with Facebook, Microsoft and Google. Similarly, Facebook has immense amount of data of user’s personal data like their

A brain built from atomic switches (Quanta Magazine)

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have built a device that is inspired by the brain and can compute just like our brain does effortlessly. The device is 2mm by 2mm mesh of silver nano-wires connected by artificial synapses which organize out of random chemical and electrical processes. It can perform simple learning and logic operations, apart from cleaning unwanted noise from input signals.

Such neuromorphic devices are more power-efficient than today’s pervasive computing method and can be made to learn from the applied inputs. It will be useful in applications like artificial intelligence which is one of the trendy topics in the air.

Refer to the article from Quanta Magazine to know more.

Potential of Quantum Computing

Traditional computers process vast amount of information using bits, which are either 1 or 0. Quantum computer has the third state of superposition of state 1 and state 0.

This superposition of states makes the quantum computing a potential harbinger of revolutionary change in the world.

Quantum computers can solve for optimisation more easily than their classical counterparts. Classical computers take one of the possible solutions at a time to determine whether it’s the best solution or not. However, quantum computers are adept at considering multiple solutions at the same time, making them ideal computing model to solve such problems. For this reason, D-Wave, a Canadian quantum computing has begun to work with investment managers on the problem of portfolio designing. In order to generate the maximum returns for a given risk profile, a fund manager needs to not only choose among the thousands of available securities, but also minimize transaction costs by achieving the most optimal portfolio in the minimum number of trades.

Since quantum computers can show huge amount of parallelism, it can be used to crack algorithm of cryptography. However, it also provides the solution in the form of quantum cryptography.  It is based on the fact that it is impossible to intercept the message without changing its credibility, rendering it useless to the eavesdropper.