The Future

A new generation of fear entrepreneurs in the IT industry are promoting anxieties and fatalism about the threat quantum computing poses to the future of encrypted data, cyber-security and our way of life.

You can’t make this stuff up. Just when we can breathe a sigh of relief as we appear to have overcome the Covid pandemic, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ draws us back into new anxiety about life on Earth – just like Al Pacino in ‘The Godfather’ trying to escape his criminal past, but being pulled back in.

However, this is not a Hollywood movie. It is a real thing. And just like the doomsday predictions of environmentalists, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ is being presented as a real existential threat to life as we know it.

“Everything we do over the internet today,” says Harri Owen, chief strategy officer at the company PostQuantum, “from buying things online, banking transactions, social media interactions, everything we do is encrypted.

“But once a functioning quantum computer appears that will be able to break that encryption… it can almost instantly create the ability for whoever’s developed it to clear bank accounts, to completely shut down government defence systems – Bitcoin wallets will be drained.”

It might not be a rosy picture but remember, all new years hold possibilities for positive outcomes.

Our fantasies are banal reflections of past glories

When was the last time you saw a genuinely new vision of the future — one that didn’t simply rehash notions that have been around since long before you were born? They are remarkably hard to find these days. Take a close look at the props that clutter up images of the future in popular culture, and you’ll find that most of them are antiques.

If Madonna penned a new pop song for teens growing up in the Zettabyte Era, she could do worse on the lyric front than: “We are living in a data-rich world, and I am a data-rich girl.” What is a zettabyte? It equals 1,024 exabytes, which is a billion terabytes, or a trillion gigabytes. Expressed with all the zeros, a zettabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes — phew.

TORONTO – A technology company says it will temporarily take its food delivery robots off Toronto’s streets as the city considers whether to ban such devices from sidewalks.

Tiny Mile, the company behind a series of pink, heart-eyed robots named Geoffrey, says it is making the temporary move because it wants to collaborate with authorities and the accessibility community.

A bunch of these little guys got stuck in an inch of snow recently.

In 1956, GM unveiled a high-tech concept car it called the Firebird II. If ever there was a Car of the Future, this was it. The sleek four-seater was powered by a jet engine, featured a titanium body, and sported a central tail fin that would have done the Batmobile proud. But the car’s most futuristic feature wasn’t visible on the outside: The Firebird II could drive itself, or at least, GM promised, such a car would be able to navigate unassisted in the not-so-distant future.

What are employers’ top two concerns right now?: First, they can’t find workers, and second, they can’t meet demand for their goods and services — often because they can’t find workers.

Both reflect the same problem — companies lack the labour and material resources to supply the demand for their products.

A scientist who wrote a leading textbook on artificial intelligence has said experts are “spooked” by their own success in the field, comparing the advance of AI to the development of the atom bomb.

Prof Stuart Russell, the founder of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, said most experts believed that machines more intelligent than humans would be developed this century, and he called for international treaties to regulate the development of the technology.