IBM’s AI Model Generates Antiviral Molecules to Combat COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

A groundbreaking study conducted by researchers from IBM, Oxford University, and Diamond Light Source demonstrates the potential of IBM’s AI model, MoLFormer, in generating antiviral molecules. These molecules have shown efficacy against multiple target virus proteins, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. The findings, published in Science Advances, highlight how AI can accelerate the drug discovery process, paving the way for faster response to future pandemics.

The collaboration between IBM, Oxford University, and Diamond Light Source began when a group of computer scientists at IBM set out to explore the possibilities of generative AI in designing novel molecules to combat SARS-CoV-2. Initially skeptical, experts like David Stuart from Oxford University, renowned for his work on HIV, SARS, and Ebola, joined forces with IBM and embarked on a three-year journey. Their goal was to demonstrate that generative AI could identify viable starting points for antivirals through collaboration with Enamine Ltd., a chemical supplier, and other researchers at Oxford.

Continue reading… “IBM’s AI Model Generates Antiviral Molecules to Combat COVID-19 and Future Pandemics”

IBM Launches Telum, Its New AI Chip

  • Our goal is to continue improving AI hardware compute efficiency by 2.5 times every year for a decade, achieving 1,000 times better performance by 2029.

IBM has announced its new chip, Telum – a new CPU chip that will allow IBM clients to leverage deep learning inference at scale. The new chip features a centralised design, which allows clients to leverage the full power of the AI processor for AI-specific workloads, making it ideal for financial services workloads like fraud detection, loan processing, clearing and settlement of trades, anti-money laundering, and risk analysis.

A Telum-based system is planned for the first half of 2022. “Our goal is to continue improving AI hardware compute efficiency by 2.5 times every year for a decade, achieving 1,000 times better performance by 2029,” said IBM in a press release.

Continue reading… “IBM Launches Telum, Its New AI Chip”

IBM Opens A New Frontier For Semiconductors, Unveils World’s First 2 Nanometer Chip Technology

IBM today unveiled the development of the world’s first chip announced with 2 nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology. According to reports, new 2 nm chip technology helps advance the state-of-the-art in the semiconductor industry, addressing the growing demand for increased chip performance and energy efficiency.

Continue reading… “IBM Opens A New Frontier For Semiconductors, Unveils World’s First 2 Nanometer Chip Technology”

IBM publishes its quantum roadmap, says it will have a 1,000-qubit machine in 2023

34F41C71-81ED-464D-A765-D6F7F31C4D03

IBM Quantum Hummingbird

IBM today, for the first time, published its road map for the future of its quantum computing hardware. There is a lot to digest here, but the most important news in the short term is that the company believes it is on its way to building a quantum processor with more than 1,000 qubits — and somewhere between 10 and 50 logical qubits — by the end of 2023.

Currently, the company’s quantum processors top out at 65 qubits. It plans to launch a 127-qubit processor next year and a 433-qubit machine in 2022. To get to this point, IBM is also building a completely new dilution refrigerator to house these larger chips, as well as the technology to connect multiple of these units to build a system akin to today’s multi-core architectures in classical chips.

Continue reading… “IBM publishes its quantum roadmap, says it will have a 1,000-qubit machine in 2023”

Inside the race to build the best quantum computer on Earth

EEC0583C-0AAE-4723-A58C-24DF3E195A3D

IBM thinks quantum supremacy is not the milestone we should care about.

Google’s most advanced computer isn’t at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, nor anywhere in the febrile sprawl of Silicon Valley. It’s a few hours’ drive south in Santa Barbara, in a flat, soulless office park inhabited mostly by technology firms you’ve never heard of.

An open-plan office holds several dozen desks. There’s an indoor bicycle rack and designated “surfboard parking,” with boards resting on brackets that jut out from the wall. Wide double doors lead into a lab the size of a large classroom. There, amidst computer racks and jumbles of instrumentation, a handful of cylindrical vessels—each a little bigger than an oil drum—hang from vibration-damping rigs like enormous steel pupae.

On one of them, the outer vessel has been removed to expose a multi-tiered tangle of steel and brass innards known as “the chandelier.” It’s basically a supercharged refrigerator that gets colder with each layer down. At the bottom, kept in a vacuum a hair’s breadth above absolute zero, is what looks to the naked eye like an ordinary silicon chip. But rather than transistors, it’s etched with tiny superconducting circuits that, at these low temperatures, behave as if they were single atoms obeying the laws of quantum physics. Each one is a quantum bit, or qubit—the basic information–storage unit of a quantum computer.

Late last October, Google announced that one of those chips, called Sycamore, had become the first to demonstrate “quantum supremacy” by performing a task that would be practically impossible on a classical machine. With just 53 qubits, Sycamore had completed a calculation in a few minutes that, according to Google, would have taken the world’s most powerful existing supercomputer, Summit, 10,000 years. Google touted this as a major breakthrough, comparing it to the launch of Sputnik or the first flight by the Wright brothers—the threshold of a new era of machines that would make today’s mightiest computer look like an abacus.

Continue reading… “Inside the race to build the best quantum computer on Earth”

New battery tech can keep your smartphone charged for five continuous days

h can keep your smartphone charged for five continuous days

BEB230FD-5BE0-41C1-9248-A5DD1CC16C59

The new high-capacity lithium-sulfur batteries can pave way for cheaper electric cars and solar grids.

Researchers have developed a new solution that is capable of powering smartphones for five continuous days or electric cars to run over 1,000 km without needing to refuel.

The new battery solution does away with the traditional lithium-ion combination in modern batteries that power devices such as smartwatches, smartphones, and even pacemakers. Instead, researchers used lithium-sulfur batteries to achieve ultra-high capacity.

Researchers at Australia-based Monash University said the team could re-configure the design of sulfur cathodes using the existing materials in standard lithium-ion batteries. The reconfiguration helped researchers achieve higher stress levels without registering any drop in overall capacity or performance.

Continue reading… “New battery tech can keep your smartphone charged for five continuous days”

Successful deployment of CQC’s Iron Bridge Quantum Photonic Cryptography Device into IBM Key Protect

F7D4C492-ED2B-425E-B7D9-2AAB180D5DC0

The IronBridge 4 qubit cryptographic device, which can generate quantum secure keys for your applications, successfully integrates with IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud.

Cambridge Quantum Computing has integrated its IronBridge quantum photonic cryptographic device with IBM Key Protect and can demonstrate the generation of post-quantum secure keys.

This solution requires minimal changes to existing infrastructure and interfaces natively with the IBM Cloud platform. This project was achieved through Cambridge Quantum Computing working with the IBM Key Protect team. Technically, this provides the IBM Cloud with various forms of post-quantum encryption keys and enhanced security around existing cryptography, as classical AES keys benefit from being generated from a quantum source of entropy. The keys are generated through NIST pre-approved algorithms and are uploaded and stored ready for use as Key Protect Standard Keys.

Continue reading… “Successful deployment of CQC’s Iron Bridge Quantum Photonic Cryptography Device into IBM Key Protect”

Robot debates humans about the dangers of artificial intelligence

A6BAB261-B9EA-4FFF-865A-4F34ECDA8F9E

Project Debater argued both for and against the benefits of artificial intelligence

An artificial intelligence has debated the dangers of AI – narrowly convincing audience members that the technology will do more good than harm.

Project Debater, a robot developed by IBM, spoke on both sides of the argument, with two human teammates for each side helping it out. Talking in a female American voice to a crowd at the University of Cambridge Union on Thursday evening, the AI gave each side’s opening statements, using arguments drawn from more than 1100 human submissions made ahead of time.

Continue reading… “Robot debates humans about the dangers of artificial intelligence”

120 million workers will need to be retrained due to AI, says IBM study

901E2961-3778-4A5B-A58D-3E648C406838

The skills gap is widening between people and AI.

But many CEOs tell IBM they don’t have the resources needed to close the skills gap brought on by emerging technologies.

Artificial Intelligence is apparently ready to get to work. Over the next three years, as many as 120 million workers from the world’s 12 largest economies may need to be retrained because of advances in artificial intelligence and intelligent automation, according to a study released Friday by IBM’s Institute for Business Value. However, less than half of CEOs surveyed by IBM said they had the resources needed to close the skills gap brought on by these new technologies.

“Organizations are facing mounting concerns over the widening skills gap and tightened labor markets with the potential to impact their futures as well as worldwide economies,” said Amy Wright, a managing partner for IBM Talent & Transformation, in a release. “Yet while executives recognize severity of the problem, half of those surveyed admit that they do not have any skills development strategies in place to address their largest gaps.”

Continue reading… “120 million workers will need to be retrained due to AI, says IBM study”

IBM just made its cancer-fighting AI projects open-source

80331063-10B7-4EC7-82DC-0BB6287883F8

IBM recently developed three artificial intelligence tools that could help medical researchers fight cancer.

Now, the company has decided to make all three tools open-source, meaning scientists will be able to use them in their research whenever they please, according to ZDNet. The tools are designed to streamline the cancer drug development process and help scientists stay on top of newly-published research — so, if they prove useful, it could mean more cancer treatments coming through the pipeline more rapidly than before.

Continue reading… “IBM just made its cancer-fighting AI projects open-source”

IBM is using self-driving car technology to power a new patient monitor for seniors

222DBB1C-4C62-4435-A836-64AB2AB2BE6E

The 65+ Age Group Will Make Up a Growing Portion of the US Population

 IBM Watson is trying its hand at in-home health monitoring with a new system that combines IBM’s machine learning software with cutting-edge Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors to paint an accurate, real-time picture of seniors’ daily lives.

IBM’s teaming up with UK-based startup Cera Care — which links caregivers with elderly patients — to get the product into roughly a dozen patient homes in a six-month pilot phase launching in June, Reuters reports.

Here’s what it means: IBM’s making its home healthcare debut with a unique approach.

Continue reading… “IBM is using self-driving car technology to power a new patient monitor for seniors”

IBM AI fails to beat human debating champion

D4E8A3FE-3620-429D-8A57-13257AB9E090

Harish Natarajan triumphed over the bot in a rapid-fire challenge.

After suffering defeat to AI at Go and Dota 2, the battle between man and machine was starting to look a little one-sided. But a human has finally notched up a win against our future robot overlords. Champion debater Harish Natarajan triumphed in a live showdown against IBM’s Miss Debater AI at the company’s Think Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The 2012 European Debate winner and IBM’s black monolith exchanged quick retorts on pre-school subsidies for 25 minutes before the crowd hailed Natarajan the victor. You can watch the debate in full below.

Continue reading… “IBM AI fails to beat human debating champion”

Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.