While We Focus on Ordinary Life Today, Impressive Changes are All Around Us
Hey, How About That?!
Turns out that yes, there are things to think about besides politics (although even the matters we will discuss today can be affected by politics, good or bad). But today, let’s just look at the tools, people, and research working hard to make us better, smarter, and safer. Here are a few that caught my eye recently.
Quantum Computers
I would not even try to explain quantum computing to the uninitiated (partly because there is so much about it that I do not know myself). Suffice it to say that this is computing at a level almost impossible to grasp. The hardware operates at extreme cold conditions that are difficult to maintain. The computing is not sequential ones and zeros like we know; in quantum computing, everything happens at once, not in sequence.
Countries and companies who understand the potential are racing to master the theory and make quantum computing a useable reality. Should a country master this well before others, the power gained would be historic. Hope the good guys get it first.
Researchers at Google recently announced a major milestone in the race to build practical quantum computers, developing a device with almost immeasurable error rates and high reliability. Still, to show how complex all this is, they said this was such an important breakthrough that they think they might have a truly workable model at the end of this decade, hopefully – not next year.
So how powerful is this thing? Google says their machine, with the graceful name of Willow, performed a herculean computing task, a benchmark computation, in about 5 minutes. By comparison, the fastest supercomputers in the world would have taken 714 trillion times longer than the age of the universe, which is about 14 billion years old, to perform the same computation. My ears started smoking as my brain tried to grasp this little factoid.
Conversational AI
Artificial Intelligence is still very much in its infancy but is coming along at exponential rates of development. One of the comparatively small advances that could be important is the spreading ability to task AI to do something by talking with it – increasingly like a real conversation in some applications.
This has implications in a couple of interesting ways. First, no need to type any more – just speak your mind. The computer will respond, ask questions, suggest variations, etc. Increasingly, the user just has to state what is desired as an outcome. No programming skills needed. The potential for more people to do more things with computers really expands with this factor.
The other aspect of this conversational mode is that we are already seeing the development of AI companions. One can create a personality with an infinite range of variables, name them, and then communicate with them regularly, like an electronic friend. This is a bit sad and a bit scary, but people who are already into this often indicate that they KNOW this is an artificial being before them but as they get better and better at connecting with the human with which they communicate, it is understandable how people feel attracted, especially those who are isolated and lonely.
Bluesky Growing by a Million/Day
Twitter was never a great social institution, but it had its utility – until Musk completely ruined it. It is amazing to me that anyone – person or institution – still maintains an account. One is simply underwriting a terrible weapon.
Efforts began some time back to start replacement entities. Some looked promising but did not really catch on, for various reasons. Enter Bluesky, started by some of the same folks who originally started Twitter. Last time I checked, they were adding over one million new users every day. It is pretty easy to use, has a nice layout, and so far, has a civil tone and good policing of bad behavior. It will be interesting to see how this one goes over time. Seems worthy of giving it a shot.
AI Infusing Into Everything – Sometimes With Good Results
Everyone worries about AI taking over the world. For good or bad, one way that happens is the application of AI into other disciplines. A primary example is the recently announced Nobel prizes. The Nobel prize for physics was awarded not to traditional physicists, but to two scientists who helped computers “learn” closer to the way the human brain does.
A day later, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to a team of scientists for using A.I. to invent new proteins and reveal the structure of existing ones — a problem that stumped biologists for decades yet was solved by A.I. in minutes.
A New World? Universe? Reality?
We are about to touch upon a new level of science, possibilities, and potential that we can scarcely even imagine today. Combining AI and CRISPR medical technology (and other technologies), the continued development of AI, quantum computing, and more.
It will be fascinating to see how all this comes out, and if we use all this to make paradise or burn down all that is around us. As always, I am hopeful, but would not yet place a bet on either outcome.
A Closing in Fun
One of my abiding fascinations is trying to get a grasp on just how big the Universe is. Today, we refer to the Known Universe, and acknowledgement that there is so very much we do not know, are completely unaware of at this point. Still, we have some pretty good numbers and comparisons to work with. Here is a mind blowing comparison to illustrate just how massive all this is.
We are pretty confident in saying that our galaxy is about midsized as these things go and that it likely contains about 100 billion stars, and likely trillions of planets. Travelling at the speed of light, it would take about 100,000 years just to cross our one galaxy. Our best guess is that there are likely at least 2 trillion (or 2 million million) galaxies in the Universe.
Now, with all that in mind, picture our solar system scaled down to the size of the palm of your hand. The next largest body is our galaxy. Using the same scale, how big would the Milky Way be? It would be the size of North America.
Have fun sorting all this out! See you next week.
Bill Clontz
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