Google launches quantum processor, artificial intelligence project

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Summary: The tech giant is partnering with UCSB to build quantum processors designed for applications in the field of artificial intelligence, poaching an acclaimed physicist in the process.

Google is set to launch a new research project in order to build quantum information processors for the field of artificial intelligence.

Hartmut Neven, Google's director of engineering, announced the initiative on the tech giant's research blog. The team, led by physicist John Martinis from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), will research and develop new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics with the aim of expanding artificial intelligence technologies.

The Google executive said Martinis and his team at UCSB have made "great strides" in building superconducting quantum electronic components, and the researcher was also recently awarded the London Prize for his "pioneering advances in quantum control and quantum information processing."

While standard computers handle binary data -- which is expressed in zeroes and ones -- quantum computing surrounds the behavior of sub-atomic particles. Some theorists believe that qubits, which could act as both types of binary at the same time, may be able to exploit all combinations of bits at the same time, which could vastly improve the speed and power of computing.

The new team will be hosted by the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, a collaborative effort between Google, NASA Ames Research Center and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). However, Martinis will be an employee of both the university and Google, and his team will still work with UCSB students and have access to UCSB fabrication facilities.

Neven said:

"With an integrated hardware group the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimization and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture."

While Google will now set the team to building its own quantum processor designs, the company says it will continue to collaborate with D-Wave scientists and to experiment with the "Vesuvius" machine at NASA.

Going beyond autonomous, self-driving cars, Wi-Fi balloons and robots, Google has shown an increased interest in artificial over the past several years. In January, the tech giant acquired British artificial intelligence firm Deepmind for what is believed to be $400 million.

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Google launches quantum processor, artificial intelligence project

Building a robot with human touch

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Dr Nikolas Blevins, a head and neck surgeon at Stanford Health Care, and Hollin Calloway, a third-year resident, using haptic technology, which allows surgeons to practice with 3D software. Photo: Jason Henry / The New York Times

In factories and warehouses, robots routinely outdo humans in strength and precision. Artificial intelligence software can drive cars, beat grandmasters at chess and leave "Jeopardy!" champions in the dust.

But machines still lack a critical element that will keep them from eclipsing most human capabilities anytime soon: a well-developed sense of touch.

Consider Dr. Nikolas Blevins, a head and neck surgeon at Stanford Health Care who routinely performs ear operations requiring that he shave away bone deftly enough to leave an inner surface as thin as the membrane in an eggshell.

Technology will need to advance robotic touch and motion control if robots are ever to collaborate with humans in roles like food service worker, medical orderly, office secretary, or health care assistant, robotic experts say. Photo: HDT Robotics

Blevins is collaborating with roboticists J. Kenneth Salisbury and Sonny Chan on designing software that will make it possible to rehearse these operations before performing them. The program blends X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging data to create a vivid three-dimensional model of the inner ear, allowing the surgeon to practice drilling away bone, to take a visual tour of the patient's skull and to virtually "feel" subtle differences in cartilage, bone and soft tissue. Yet no matter how thorough or refined, the software provides only the roughest approximation of Blevins' sensitive touch.

"Being able to do virtual surgery, you really need to have haptics," he said, referring to the technology that makes it possible to mimic the sensations of touch in a computer simulation.

The software's limitations typify those of robotics, in which researchers lag in designing machines to perform tasks that humans routinely do instinctively. Since the first robotic arm was designed at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1960s, robots have learned to perform repetitive factory work, but they can barely open a door, pick themselves up if they fall, pull a coin out of a pocket or twirl a pencil.

The correlation between highly evolved artificial intelligence and physical ineptness even has a name: Moravec's paradox, after robotics pioneer Hans Moravec, who wrote in 1988, "It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a 1-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

Advances in haptics and kinematics, the study of motion control in jointed bodies, are essential if robots are ever to collaborate with humans in hoped-for roles like food service worker, medical orderly, office secretary and health care assistant.

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Building a robot with human touch

Making sense of touch compute

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In factories and warehouses, robots routinely outdo humans in strength and precision. Artificial intelligence software can drive cars, beat grandmasters at chess and leave Jeopardy! champions in the dust.

But machines still lack a critical element that will keep them from eclipsing most human capabilities anytime soon: a well-developed sense of touch.

Consider Dr. Nikolas Blevins, a head and neck surgeon at Stanford Health Care who routinely performs ear operations requiring that he shave away bone deftly enough to leave an inner surface as thin as the membrane in an eggshell.

Blevins is collaborating with roboticists J. Kenneth Salisbury and Sonny Chan on designing software that will make it possible to rehearse these operations before performing them. The program blends X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging data to create a vivid three-dimensional model of the inner ear, allowing the surgeon to practice drilling away bone, to take a visual tour of the patients skull and to virtually feel subtle differences in cartilage, bone and soft tissue. Yet no matter how thorough or refined, the software provides only the roughest approximation of Blevins sensitive touch.

Being able to do virtual surgery, you really need to have haptics, he said, referring to the technology that makes it possible to mimic the sensations of touch in a computer simulation.

The softwares limitations typify those of robotics, in which researchers lag in designing machines to perform tasks that humans routinely do instinctively. Since the first robotic arm was designed at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1960s, robots have learned to perform repetitive factory work, but they can barely open a door, pick themselves up if they fall, pull a coin out of a pocket or twirl a pencil.

The correlation between highly evolved artificial intelligence and physical ineptness even has a name: Moravecs paradox, after robotics pioneer Hans Moravec, who wrote in 1988, It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a 1-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.

Advances in haptics and kinematics, the study of motion control in jointed bodies, are essential if robots are ever to collaborate with humans in hoped-for roles like food service worker, medical orderly, office secretary and health care assistant.

It just takes time, and its more complicated, Ken Goldberg, a roboticist at the University of California, Berkeley, said of such advances. Humans are really good at this, and they have millions of years of evolution.

Touch impulses

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Making sense of touch compute

Google To Partner With Award-Winning Quantum Computer Researchers

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September 3, 2014

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

One of the worlds largest consumer technology companies is entering into the quantum computing market, as Google announced this week that it plans to team with researchers at UC Santa Barbara to build processors based on superconducting electronics.

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, which was launched by Google in May, is operated out of NASAs Ames Research Center in Moffat Field, California and uses a quantum computer from D-Wave Systems to study the application of quantum optimization to difficult problems in artificial intelligence. The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is also a project partner.

On Tuesday, Google Director of Engineering Hartmut Neven confirmed that John Martinis and his team at UC Santa Barbara were also joining the research project. Martinis, who was recently presented with the London Prize for his work in quantum control and quantum information processing, and his colleagues have made great strides in building superconducting quantum electronic components of very high fidelity, Neven said.

With an integrated hardware group the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimization and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture, he added, noting that they would continue to work with D-Wave scientists and planned to upgrade their Vesuvius machine to a 1000 qubit Washington processor.

According to Reuters reporters Subrat Patnaik and Arnab Sen, while Google is best known for its work on search engines, mobile device technology, self-driving cars and robotics projects, the Mountain View, California-firm has also been increasingly interested in the field of artificial intelligence even going as far as acquiring AI startup DeepMind Technologies Ltd in January to gain an edge in the burgeoning field.

GigaOMs Derrick Harris explained that even though Google is not yet severing ties with D-Wave, it ultimately is planning to develop their own quantum computing hardware. After all, he explains, the company has long designed its own servers and switches, and is pushing an artificial intelligence agenda that includes smartphones, robots and driverless cars. If Google, or anyone, is going to solve the very hard AI problems these technologies present, they probably cant sit around and wait for someone else to build the right systems for them.

Both the UCSB and D-Wave systems require cooling to nearly absolute zero, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. But there are some technical differences, added Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, Martinis and his associates published research featuring a five-qubit array that showed advances in correcting certain errors that can occur during the fragile conditions that create quantum effects.

Martinis told Clark he is hopeful the new project will produce technology that will not lose its memory as quickly as earlier hardware, and that he expected his team would actually benefit from Googles affiliation from D-Wave. We view this as a complementary approach to what D-Wave is doing, he explained.

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Google To Partner With Award-Winning Quantum Computer Researchers

Google Unveils Quantum Computing Research Initiative

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Google Inc. (GOOG) is broadening efforts to create its own cutting-edge computer technology, seeking to use more artificial intelligence in designs that could someday speed up its services.

The company yesterday unveiled a hardware initiative to develop and build processors for its Quantum Artificial Intelligence group, which focuses on technology capable of super-fast calculations based on principles of quantum mechanics. A research team from the University of California at Santa Barbara is joining the initiative, Mountain View, California-based Google said on its research blog.

Google, which spent almost $8 billion on research and development last year, is investing in fresh computing ideas as it looks to keep the lead in markets such as Internet search and online advertising. Quantum technology is seen by some in the technology industry as a transformative way for computers to analyze vast amounts of data. Such advances would be especially useful in Googles main businesses, as well as newer projects like Web-connected devices and cars.

With an integrated hardware group, the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs, the company said on its blog.

The computers promise to be faster than traditional ones at solving tricky problems that require sorting through and analyzing large volumes of digital information. One of Googles Quantum AI researchers, Masoud Mohseni, has co-authored papers with leading academics in the field, and the company has been seen as helping lead the push into this new technology.

Google rival Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the worlds largest software maker, is also pursuing this area via its Quantum Architectures and Computation Group.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jack Clark in San Francisco at jclark185@bloomberg.net; Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pui-Wing Tam at ptam13@bloomberg.net Jillian Ward, Ben Livesey

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Google Unveils Quantum Computing Research Initiative

Magellan Aerospace to create 47 jobs in Co Down

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The fuselage of an Airbus A320 sits inside an Airbus A300-600 Beluga super transporter aircraft. Magellan Aerospace, which supplies products and services to major corporations such as Airbus, is to invest 6 million in Northern Ireland. Photo: Bloomberg

Magellan Aerospace, the Canadian group, which supplies products and services to major corporations from Airbus to Bombardier, is to invest 6 million in Northern Ireland and create 47 jobs at its Greyabbey operation.

The Ontario headquartered group which engineers and manufactures aeroengine and aerostructure components for aerospace markets, has had a presence in the North since it acquired John Huddleston Engineering in 2012.

Magellan, which currently employs 109 people, lists major aerospace groups from Boeing to GKN and Spirit AeroSystems among its key customers.

It intends to construct a new specialised assembly facility and invest in additional advanced machining technology at its Greyabbey plant.

It will receive 700,000 in support from Invest NI towards the cost of the investment project.

Haydn Martin, Magellans vice president business development Europe, said the acquisition of John Huddleston Engineering had strengthened its core manufacturing capabilities and expanded its European operations.

This investment takes the Greyabbey plant to the next level and will enable us to support growth in our key customer programmes, Mr Martin added.

The Norths Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster believes the latest investment by Magellan will also enhance the local aerospace sector.

It will strengthen Magellan Aerospace (Greyabbey) as a supplier of machining, assembly, supply chain management and logistics to the global aerospace industry.

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Magellan Aerospace to create 47 jobs in Co Down

Googles Calico Partners With AbbVie, Will Open R&D Facility

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The ball is starting to get rolling with Googles anti-aging company Calico. As reported recently, it now has a website, and today, the site added its first piece of news.

Calico has partnered with AbbVie to co-invest in an R&D collaboration. The announcement says they may co-invest $1.5 billion. Calico will also be creating a R&D facility in the Bay Area to focus on aging and age-related diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer.

The two companies will combine their complementary strengths to accelerate the availability of new therapies for age-related diseases, as they put it.

This collaboration demonstrates our commitment to exploring new areas of medicine and innovative approaches to drug discovery and development that augments our already robust pipeline, said Richard A. Gonzalez, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, AbbVie. We are pleased to be working with such outstanding scientists as Art Levinson, Hal Barron and their team. The potential to help improve patients lives with new therapies is enormous.

Our relationship with AbbVie is a pivotal event for Calico, whose mission is to develop life-enhancing therapies for people with age-related diseases. It will greatly accelerate our efforts to understand the science of aging, advance our clinical work, and help bring important therapies to patients everywhere, said Art Levinson, CEO and founder of Calico.

Both companies will initially provide up to $250 million to fund the collaboration with the potential for both to contribute an additional $500 million. Both will share costs and profits equally.

Calico will start filling critical positions immediately, with plans to establish a substantial team of scientists and research staff.

Image via Calico

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Googles Calico Partners With AbbVie, Will Open R&D Facility

‘Biopharming’ Offers A Powerful New Approach To Ebola And Other Diseases

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Due to the largest-ever Ebola virus outbreak in Africa and the treatment of a handful of patients with an experimental drug, there has been a resurgence of interest in therapeutics to treat the disease. One aspect that has been largely ignored is that the drug, called ZMapp, a mixture of three varieties of humanized monoclonal antibodieswhich bind, in vivo, to proteins on the surface of the Ebola virusrepresents an exquisite tour de force of genetic engineering.

The drug is obtained from genetically engineered tobacco plants that have been infected with genetically engineered plant viruses. During infection of the tobacco plants over the course of a week, the viruses, which are completely harmless to animals and humans, produce huge amounts of the antibodies. The plants are then harvested and homogenized and the antibodies are purified and formulated for administration. They bind to proteins of the Ebola virus in patients and elicit a humoral (antibody) and cellular (lymphocyte) response to the virus.

A seminal study of ZMapp in monkeys experimentally infected with Ebola virus was reported last week in the journal Nature. All 18 rhesus macaques treated with the drug recovered, even when it was administered beginning up to five days after infection. According to the journals press release, Three doses of ZMapp, administered at three-day intervals starting on day three, four or five after rhesus macaques were infected with Ebola virus, resulted in the survival of all 18 animals, while the three rhesus macaques that did not receive ZMapp all succumbed to Ebola virus infection by day eight. The drug reversed severe Ebola virus disease symptoms such as excessive bleeding, rashes and elevated liver enzymes. These findings are particularly encouraging because they provide precisely the kind of evidence of efficacy needed for regulatory approval of ZMapp, which will be evaluated by FDA under the animal rule. This applies to the development of drugs when human efficacy studies are not ethical or feasible.

Obtaining medicines from plants is not new. Many common medicines, such as morphine, codeine, cocaine and the laxative Metamucil are all purified from plants. But the promise of a relatively new approach called biopharming lies in using genetic engineering techniques to induce crops such as corn, tomatoes and tobacco to produce high concentrations of high-value pharmaceuticals.

Biopharming emerged with great promise about 15 years ago, with clinical trials of vaccines and drugs made in bananas, tomatoes and tobacco. Unfortunately, the field confronted the zeal and risk-aversion of regulators. In 2002, a company called Ventria purified two human proteins from genetically engineered rice and found that when added to oral rehydration solution given to children with diarrhea, they markedly shortened the duration of symptoms and reduced the incidence of recurrence. This potential public health breakthrough has been effectively blocked by the FDA: In 2010 the company approached the Food and Drug Administration for recognition that these proteins, which are found in human tears and breast milk, are generally recognized as safe (a regulatory term of art), but received no response. Ventria was unwilling to market the product without the FDAs endorsement, so it isnt available, depriving children in developing countries of a life-saving therapy.

More than a decade ago, scientists at Arizona State University created a biopharmed vaccine against Norwalk virus, the bug that annually causes millions of cases of diarrhea on cruise ships and in nursing homes. This vaccine, initially produced in tomato fruit and more recently in tobacco leaves, is still being studied to find an optimal formulation for administration.

The field testing of biopharmed plants has proved particularly problematic. In 2003 the U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced onerous new rules for the field testing of biopharmed crops. That ended most entrepreneurial interest in biopharming. Mapp Biopharmaceutical, the privately-owned company that makes the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, boasts a workforce of nine people and has been completely financed by government grants and contracts.

USDAs rules on the cultivation of the biopharmed plants in the field impose highly prescriptive, one-size-fits-all design standards, as contrasted with performance standards, which would specify an end-pointsuch as gene-transfer below a certain levelthat must be achieved by whatever means. USDAs regulation fails to take into account the actual risks of a given situation.

The ostensible objective of the regulation is to avoid biopharmed drugs contaminating food, if crop plants are used in the drug production. The food industry, including groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America and the U.S. Rice Producers Association, has raised NIMBYnot in my backyardobjections. They claimed that biopharmed plants could contaminate their food-grade crops, but that fear is overblown and can be avoided in several ways. Production in a non-food crop is an obvious one, and that has affected manufacturing decisions for many new biopharmed vaccines and drugs. For example, the developers of the Norwalk virus vaccine switched from tomato to tobacco both to improve drug yields and to avoid becoming embroiled in disputes with NGOs and regulators about the supposed risks of genetic engineering and possible contamination of food.

The risk of plant-made drugs getting into food products is now virtually nonexistent because the companies involved have switched to production in facilities with rigidly controlled environments, mainly using tobacco. This approach was greatly advanced by the investment in 2010 of more than $80 million in facilities by the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to expand the tobacco-growing capacity at several companies. The investment was driven by DODs desire to expand the nations ability to respond with new drugs and vaccines to emerging diseases or attacks with biological agents. These sorts of facilities, which have a high degree of control over growth conditions, are essential for the reproducible production of high-quality drugs. This constructive public-private collaboration set the stage for ZMapp, the Ebola drug, to be produced by one of the companies Kentucky Bioprocessing.

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'Biopharming' Offers A Powerful New Approach To Ebola And Other Diseases

MPs’ protests fail to derail “three parent family” plans

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First published in News Last updated by Robert Merrick, Parliamentary Correspondent

PROTESTS by a group of MPs have failed to derail plans for a controversial gene therapy, to stop incurable diseases passing to the next generations.

Ministers vowed to plough ahead with preparations for the DNA-altering procedure, which is being pioneered by a team at Newcastle University.

However, the department of health declined to say when the issue would be put to a vote in Parliament, despite suggestions that it could be before the end of the year.

The treatment involves replacing faulty mitochondria responsible for inherited diseases, including muscle wasting, heart problems, vision loss, organ failure and epilepsy.

Embryos are given healthy DNA from donor eggs, meaning a baby has the DNA of three people from two parents, plus less than one per cent from the donor.

Professor Doug Turnbull, who leads the Newcastle team, has urged the Government to draw up legislation as soon as possible, because of the number of patients waiting for treatment.

But, in the Commons, MPs brought forward a motion demanding further research and for new regulations to be delayed in light of public safety concerns.

Fiona Bruce, a Conservative backbencher, claimed the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) wanted further research, saying: This is a case of genetic engineering.

It is the alteration of a potential human being - the removal of certain genes and their replacement with others, to create children.

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MPs' protests fail to derail "three parent family" plans

Insights from the Behavioral Science Guy: What to say to a flirtatious co-worker

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If you are astute in reporting what is already happening and insightful about the effects it has on things your co-worker cares about, he or she is likely to listen.

KatarzynaBialasiewicz, Getty Images/iStockphoto

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Dear Joseph,

I have a surgeon colleague who is flirting with a staff member. He is very obviously taken with her and cannot seem to help himself. She is now reciprocating the attention. Both are married to other people and the staff are becoming uncomfortable. I need some advice on how to have the conversation with the surgeon so we can maintain a professional working relationship.

Signed,

Flirting with Disaster

Dear Flirting,

Yikes. Thats about as sensitive a subject as you could take on. And I absolutely agree that you must. People under the spell of intoxicating hormones often delude themselves into thinking that their behavior is either invisible or acceptable to everyone else in the world. Or they become so self-absorbed that they stop caring what others think. This is a tough veil to penetrate.

But theres a good chance you can.

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Insights from the Behavioral Science Guy: What to say to a flirtatious co-worker

Insights from the Behavioral Science Guy: The Behavioral Science Guy: What to say to a flirtatious co-worker

Posted on by

If you are astute in reporting what is already happening and insightful about the effects it has on things your co-worker cares about, he or she is likely to listen.

KatarzynaBialasiewicz, Getty Images/iStockphoto

Enlarge photo

Dear Joseph,

I have a surgeon colleague who is flirting with a staff member. He is very obviously taken with her and cannot seem to help himself. She is now reciprocating the attention. Both are married to other people and the staff are becoming uncomfortable. I need some advice on how to have the conversation with the surgeon so we can maintain a professional working relationship.

Signed,

Flirting with Disaster

Dear Flirting,

Yikes. Thats about as sensitive a subject as you could take on. And I absolutely agree that you must. People under the spell of intoxicating hormones often delude themselves into thinking that their behavior is either invisible or acceptable to everyone else in the world. Or they become so self-absorbed that they stop caring what others think. This is a tough veil to penetrate.

But theres a good chance you can.

More here:
Insights from the Behavioral Science Guy: The Behavioral Science Guy: What to say to a flirtatious co-worker