Estonia becomes the world’s first virtual nation capable of rebooting itself
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Technology is showing us how ancient the concept of the traditional nation state is, and as virtual nations take shape being able to reboot them in times of war is crucial. How do you reboot an entire country? It’s an odd question, but in...
Hackers use data science to evade state of the art AI cybersecurity systems
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF By figuring out what data sets cybersecurity are training their AI’s on hackers have found a way to create malware that can’t be detected. Walking around the exhibition floor at this week’s massive Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas many people were struck...
Microsoft gets rid of blockchain miners with new Ethereum blockchain service
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Mining blockchain has become a contentious issue because of the amount of energy it uses and its speed, Microsoft are trying to solve both problems. Hot on the heels of its interest in Iota, a blockchain-like peer to peer cryptocurrency that does away with...
Microsoft created elusive particles to build the world’s most accurate quantum computer
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The most powerful quantum computers in the future will be the ones not necessarily with the most Qubits, but be the ones that are the most accurate, and that’s what Microsoft is focusing on. At Microsoft’s Dutch research facility at the Delft University of Technology,...
Tech giants prepare for the next giant leap in quantum computing
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the race to build quantum computers heats up it could be the company who has the most accurate quantum computer, not the one who has the largest, that wins the game. The hype that has been building around quantum computing, a potentially revolutionary technology...
Air France KLM and Microsoft use blockchain to improve MRO
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Blockchain has enormous potential to improve the efficiency of supply chains and especially MRO, and this is one of the world’s first proof of concepts. Air France KLM’s engineering and maintenance division is evaluating the potential for Blockchain to become its new digital ledger...
Futurist keynote, London: The Future of Artificial Intelligence, British Museum
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a risk that humanity is under estimating the impact that AI will have on the world, particularly in the criminal underworld, but if I could give you a single take away it would be this – AI’s capabilities are evolving at a furious...
Microsoft’s newest AI is an artist with an imagination
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a great tussle going on between people who believe AI can never become “creative” and those who do, but depending on how you define “imagination” Microsofts latest AI could prove the naysayers wrong. Ever since computer scientist Alan Turing first proposed his...
World first as scientists created the world’s first DNA storage file system
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF DNA can store huge volumes of information and it lasts for hundreds of thousands of years making it an ideal storage medium for tomorrow’s technologies. The majority of the cells in the human body contain the information you need to build a complete person...
Blockchain without the miners, IOTA unveil their revolutionary new cryptocurrency
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Mining cryptocurrency is an incredibly contentious, complex, and energy expensive operation, but now a German non-profit has built a cryptocurrency that does away with miners completely, and they’re being backed by the biggest names in tech. Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency on a hot...
Microsoft calls for a “Digital Geneva convention” to defang cyber attacks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In some respects we are starting to see the advent of open cyber warfare between competing sovereign nations and unless someone steps in the problem is only going to escalate. Last year cyber the rise of warfare prompted the US Government to implement a...
Rise of the “Citizen Developers,” Microsofts Stack Overflow bot makes programming easier
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine being able to build mobile applications and applications without ever having to know how to code. That’s where we’re headed, and it’ll be here sooner than you think. A little while ago I wrote an article on a new first of a kind...
Tech giants team up to create the world’s first Deep Learning standard
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many of today’s technology companies are creating proprietary AI’s that can’t interoperate with each other but a new framework from Facebook and Microsoft is setting out to change that. As Artificial Intelligence (AI), and in this case more specifically Machine Learning becomes more pervasive...
Microsoft unveils it’s new real time AI engine
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s that can analyse data in real time will become increasingly important as we come to rely on them more and more to help us make, and automate, decisions It’s probably fair to say that in many cases, whether it’s the new breed of...
Microsoft’s AI just got a perfect score on Mrs. Pacman
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Games and play help humans learn new skills, especially when we’re young, but it increasingly looks like AI’s are the superior game players Video games are one of the best ways to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) – they offer risk free digital environments for...
Microsoft’s pig wrangling competition is teaching AI’s to cooperate
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today’s AI’s operate independently of each other, but in the future they’ll need to cooperate and Microsoft wants to teach them how. I live in the countryside in the UK, and I also visited France a lot when I was a child, so I...
Skype can now translate ten languages in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Over the past five decades the world has got immeasurably smaller but language is still a barrier, but that’s all beginning to change. Yes, it’s a small world. Or so we’re told. The advent of the telephone and the internet made distance irrelevant and...
Microsoft will offer DNA storage in the cloud by 2020
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF With the amount of information on the planet exploding and traditional storage technologies reaching their theoretical limits we need a new way to store the torrents of data society is creating, and DNA storage looks increasingly like it’s the answer. Microsoft, who last year...
World’s top AI experts met to discuss Doomsday scenarios, and solutions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Showcasing how AI will destroy the world is easy but finding a solution isn’t. Today’s press is full of column inches on the future impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society. On one side of the fence AI optimists predict a brave new world...
Wall Street supremo’s pile into a new AI hedge fund dubbed the future of finance
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Until now the financial services industry has never been able to benefit from a network effect, but that’s about to change and it could tip Wall Street on its head. The “Network Effect” is a phenomenon known the world over, it’s where a service...
