Google – Page 3 – Impact Lab

Banking, Google, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Google to offer checking accounts in partnership with banks starting next year

November 21, 2019

Google is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services: The company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, starting as early as next year. Google is calling the project “Cache,” and it’ll partner with banks and credit unions to offer the checking accounts, with the banks handling all financial and compliance activities related to the accounts.

Google’s Caesar Sengupta spoke to the WSJ about the new initiative, and Sengupta made clear that Google will be seeking to put its financial institution partners much more front-and-center for its customers than other tech companies have perhaps done with their financial products. Apple works with Goldman Sachs on its Apple Card credit product, for instance, but the credit card is definitely presented primarily as an Apple product.

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Amazon.com, Apple, Computer Security, Google, Home Technology, Science & Technology News

Researchers used a laser to hack Alexa and other voice assistants

November 13, 2019

San Francisco (CNN Business)Usually you have to talk to voice assistants to get them to do what you want. But a group of researchers determined they can also command them by shining a laser at smart speakers and other gadgets that house virtual helpers such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Japan’s University of Electro-Communications figured out they could do this silently and from hundreds of feet away, as long as they had a line of sight to the smart gadget. The finding could enable anyone (with motivation and a few hundred dollars’ worth of electronics) to attack a smart speaker from outside your house, making it do anything from playing music to opening a smart garage door to buying you stuff on Amazon.

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Google, quantum computing, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Google says its quantum computer has just completed a 10,000-year task in less than four minutes

November 1, 2019

‘This achievement is the result of years of research and the dedication of many people,’ Google engineering director Hartmut Neven said in a blog post

(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it’s built a computer that’s reached “quantum supremacy,” performing a computation in 200 seconds that would take the fastest supercomputers about 10,000 years.

The results of Google’s tests, which were conducted using a quantum chip it developed in-house, were published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

“This achievement is the result of years of research and the dedication of many people,” Google engineering director Hartmut Neven said in a blog post. “It’s also the beginning of a new journey: figuring out how to put this technology to work. We’re working with the research community and have open-sourced tools to enable others to work alongside us to identify new applications.”

The idea behind quantum computing is to exponentially improve the processing speed and power of computers to be able to simulate large systems, driving advances in physics, chemistry and other fields. Rather than storing information in binary 0s or 1s like classical computers, quantum computers rely on “qubits”, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously, dramatically increasing the amount of information that can be encoded.

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Google, quantum computing, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Google quantum computer leaves old-school supercomputers in the dust

November 1, 2019

Google’s Sycamore chip powers a quantum computer

The era of practical quantum computers has begun — at least on one speed test showing “quantum supremacy.”

A Google quantum computer has far outpaced ordinary computing technology, an achievement called quantum supremacy that’s an important milestone for a revolutionary way of processing data. Google disclosed the results in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The achievement came after more than a decade of work at Google, including the use of its own quantum computing chip, called Sycamore.

“Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output,” Google researchers said in a blog post about the work.

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Automation, drones, Google, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Alphabet’s Wing begins making first commercial drone deliveries in the US

October 28, 2019

Alphabet -owned drone delivery spin-out Wing is starting to service U.S. customers, after becoming the first drone delivery company to get the federal go-ahead to do so earlier this year. Wing is working with FedEx Express and Walgreens on this pilot, and their first customers are Michael and Kelly Collver, who will get a “cough and cold pack,” which includes Tylenol, cough drops, facial tissues, Emergen-C and bottled water (do people who have colds need bottled water?).

The Collvers are receiving their package in Christianburg, Va., which is where Wing and Walgreens will run this inaugural pilot of the drone delivery service. Walgreens gets a noteworthy credit in the bargain, becoming the first U.S. retailer to do a store-to-customer doorstep delivery via drone, while FedEx will be the first logistics provider to deliver an e-commerce drone delivery with a separate shipment.

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Computer Security, cutting edge, Google, quantum computing, Science & Technology News

‘Quantum Apocalypse’: How ultra-powerful computers could cripple governments and effectively break the internet

October 12, 2019

A new era of computing could bring about a ‘quantum apocalypse’

‘Our modern systems of finance, commerce, communication, transportation, manufacturing, energy, government, and healthcare will for all intents and purposes cease to function,’ cyber security expert warns

A new era of unfathomably fast computers is just a few years away, with quantum computers set to transform the way we communicate, cure disease, and even solve problems previously thought impossible.

But some computing experts fear functional quantum computers could also effectively break the internet as we know it.

Recent progress made by Google means their arrival could be sooner than expected. A leaked research paper suggests the company has achieved what is known as quantum supremacy, whereby a quantum computer performed a calculation that was far beyond the reach of today’s most powerful supercomputers.

First theorised by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers combine the peculiar properties of quantum physics with computer science to achieve processing power that is exponentially more powerful than traditional computers.

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Computer Security, Google, quantum computing, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Here’s what quantum supremacy does—and doesn’t—mean for computing

September 29, 2019

Google has reportedly demonstrated for the first time that a quantum computer is capable of performing a task beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer in any practical time frame—a milestone known in the world of computing as “quantum supremacy.”

The ominous-sounding term, which was coined by theoretical physicist John Preskill in 2012, evokes an image of Darth Vader–like machines lording it over other computers. And the news has already produced some outlandish headlines, such as one on the Infowars website that screamed, “Google’s ‘Quantum Supremacy’ to Render All Cryptography and Military Secrets Breakable.” Political figures have been caught up in the hysteria, too: Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate, tweeted that “Google achieving quantum computing is a huge deal. It means, among many other things, that no code is uncrackable.”

Nonsense. It doesn’t mean that at all. Google’s achievement is significant, but quantum computers haven’t suddenly turned into computing colossi that will leave conventional machines trailing in the dust. Nor will they be laying waste to conventional cryptography in the near future—though in the longer term, they could pose a threat we need to start preparing for now.

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Artificial Intelligence, Children, Google, Parenting, Science & Technology News

Google files patent for using A.I. to track a baby’s body and eye movements

September 17, 2019

In a patent application published this week, Google indicated it’s looking into how artificial intelligence can be used to watch for abnormal behavior in babies.

The system would consist of eye tracking and motion detection and could alert a parent if anything is out of the ordinary.

Google’s hefty investment in artificial intelligence might be making its way to the crib.

According to a patent application filed last year and published on Thursday, Google is researching technology that could track a baby’s eyes, movements and sounds using “intelligent” audio and video. If the behavior seems abnormal, the cloud-based system would notify parents on their device.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Science & Technology News

Google’s chief decision scientist: Humans can fix AI’s shortcomings

June 30, 2019

Cassie Kozyrkov, “chief decision scientist” at Google, speaking at AI Summit (London) 2019

Google’s chief decision scientist: Humans can fix AI’s shortcomings

Cassie Kozyrkov has served in various technical roles at Google over the past five years, but she now holds the somewhat curious position of “chief decision scientist.” Decision science sits at the intersection of data and behavioral science and involves statistics, machine learning, psychology, economics, and more.

In effect, this means Kozyrkov helps Google push a positive AI agenda — or, at the very least, convince people that AI isn’t as bad as the headlines claim.

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Augmented Reality, Google, Great New Product, Science & Technology News

Google says the new Google Glass gives workers ‘superpowers’

May 29, 2019

A new version of the device–Glass Enterprise Edition 2–comes with a new look, a faster processor, and a brighter display.

In the workplace, nobody calls them Glassholes. Employees at hundreds of companies are wearing Google Glass, the heads-up display glasses that have found a new home in factories and healthcare facilities after getting off to a rough start in the consumer space.

Now Google has a new version of the device–Glass Enterprise Edition 2–with a new look, a faster processor, and a brighter display. The glasses actually come in two parts: Google makes the right side of the glasses–the side that holds all the technology–and Smith Optics makes the safety glasses that the Glass attaches to. This makes it possible for multiple employees to own their own pair of safety glasses and share one Glass.

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Food, Google, new technology, Science & Technology News

Restaurants are ignoring calls from Google’s Smart Assistant

May 13, 2019

Hello, This Is Robot

Almost exactly a year ago, everyone was flipping out over Google’s newly announced Duplex feature, which basically pretends to be a human assistant in order to make reservations at restaurants or schedule trips to the hairdresser.

But the AI-powered assistant has struggled to win over the hearts of service workers. The Verge reports that restaurants are hanging up on Google’s auto-calling voice assistant — sometimes because they’re creeped out by how lifelike it sounds.

“I was spooked at how natural and human the machine sounds,” server Shawn Watford of Birmingham, Alabama told The Verge. “It was so weird [that] when it called, I immediately hung up.”

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Amazon.com, drones, Google, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Google just beat Amazon to launching one of the first drone delivery services

April 15, 2019

A Wing delivery drone

Google just beat Amazon to launching one of the first drone delivery services

The Alphabet startup Wing has secured approval for one of the world’s first drone delivery services.
The service is set to officially launch in Canberra, Australia, after securing approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority following a successful trial.
The service will aim to use drones to deliver items including coffee and ice cream to homes in the Canberra area within minutes of their being ordered through an app.
It means Alphabet has beaten Amazon to the punch after Jeff Bezos failed to deliver on his promise of launching a commercial drone delivery service by 2018.

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