IBM and Japan: Quantum System One

 More moves forward in Quantum Computing:

IBM and the University of Tokyo Unveil Japan's Most Powerful Quantum Computer in PRNewsWire

TOKYO, July 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Tokyo today unveiled Japan's most powerful quantum computer as part of their ongoing collaboration to advance Japan's exploration of quantum science, business and education. "IBM is committed to the growth of the global quantum ecosystem," said Dr. Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research. The IBM Quantum System One is now operational for researchers at both scientific institutions and businesses in Japan, with access ... '

Reflections and Projections about IBM Watson

An nicely done internal look at Watson.   As I have mentioned here before, Watson may not have lived up to some of the early expectations, but it remains a serious contender for serious, practical AI  applications.  And in particular because they already have capabilities like BPM which can be used to model and link to real business process.  Early on talked to them about that.  They seemed enthusiastic about the idea, but I have not seen any development since.  They have external collaboration with RPA vendors, which is a good thing also.

IBM Watson: Reflections and Projections  By Rob Thomas, IBM

AI has gone through many cycles since we first coined the term “machine learning” in 1959. Our latest resurgence began in 2011 when we put Watson on national television to play Jeopardy! against humans. This became a cornerstone event, demonstrating that we had something unique. And we saw early success, putting Watson to work on projects with clients. This created even more excitement. That excitement led to more opportunity. At this stage, we have a large product organization, separate dedicated research organization, and an entire health organization all leveraging and building on this technology.

So, what is Watson? This is the question I’ve been asked the most since IBM combined its Data and AI software units earlier this year. ......

By Rob Thomas
Author of ‘The End of Tech Companies’ & ‘Big Data Revolution’  amzn.to/2uVu84R. Leading Data and AI @IBM. Robdthomas@gmail

IBM Develops Cloud Services for Quantum Computers

More on the use and interaction of quantum computing with current needs, like secure cryptography.  Is likely to increasingly become an important issue.  Note the offer of a Quantum Risk Assessment.

From PRNewswire via Cision:

IBM Developing New Cloud Services and Technology to Help Keep Data Secured from Future Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers

- New quantum risk assessment and subscription services available to clients

- IBM Cloud will begin to provide quantum-safe cryptography services on the public cloud in 2020

- IBM Research demonstrates world's first quantum computing safe tape drive prototype

- IBM donates quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms to open source community   

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at the Second Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Conference organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), IBM (NYSE: IBM) took a major step towards maintaining the highest level of security of its client's data and privacy in the future from fault-tolerant quantum computers. 

IBM took a major step today towards maintaining the highest level of security of its client’s data and privacy in the future from fault-tolerant quantum computers with the demonstration of the world’s first quantum computing safe tape drive prototype. Credit: IBM Research

IBM took a major step today towards maintaining the highest level of security of its client’s data and privacy in the future from fault-tolerant quantum computers with the demonstration of the world’s first quantum computing safe tape drive prototype. Credit: IBM Research

With today's news, IBM is announcing that it will begin to provide, what the industry would call, quantum-safe cryptography services on the IBM public cloud in 2020 and is now offering a Quantum Risk Assessment from IBM Security to help customers assess their risk in the quantum world. Additionally, IBM cryptographers have prototyped the world's first quantum computing safe enterprise class tape, an important step before commercialization.

IBM is also committed to making quantum-safe algorithms available through the open source community. As an industry, we can only become secure if new quantum-safe algorithms are tested, interoperable and easily consumable in common security standards. To this end, IBM is donating algorithms and support to a number of open source projects such as OpenQuantumSafe.org.   ... " 

Experiments with Quantum Computers

Technical piece.  We are starting to tease out how we might utilize quantum effects in computers.    We saw some examples we might use in combinatorial analytic problems, for example supply chain optimization.   Waiting to get a good look at such an example.

Scientists Use IBM Q to Tease Out Quantum Secrets 
UChicago News (IL)
Louise Lerner

Researchers at the University of Chicago (UChicago) used the open-access IBM Q quantum computer to experimentally verify elusive principles governing quantum molecular behavior. The researchers focused on the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that two electrons cannot occupy the same position in space simultaneously. A molecule's electrons often experience additional localization limits, known as the generalized Pauli constraints. The UChicago team created an array of algorithms that would ask IBM's Q Experience computer to randomly produce quantum states in three-electron systems, then measure the molecules' most likely locations. The results, the researchers said, provided strong experimental verification. UChicago's David Mazziotti said, "“The simplest generalized Pauli constraints were discovered theoretically on a classical computer at IBM in the early 1970s, so it is fitting that for the first time they would be experimentally verified on an IBM quantum computer.”   .... ' 

Video Understanding

Very good piece, with as you might expect, good demonstration video.   This takes such methods beyond captioning and close to what we continually do as humans, visually interpret and understand a contextually changing view.  A sort of visual scene understanding.   Sensory AI at its most useful.

Helping AI master video understanding  By Dan Gutfreund
Video Analytics Scientist, IBM Research AI

I am part of the team at the MIT IBM Watson AI Lab that is carrying out fundamental AI research to push the frontiers of core technologies that will advance the state-of-the-art in AI video comprehension. This is just one example of joint research we’re pursuing together to produce innovations in AI technology that solve real business challenges.

Great progress has been made and I am excited to share that we are releasing the Moments in Time Dataset, a large-scale dataset of one million three-second annotated video clips for action recognition to accelerate the development of technologies and models that enable automatic video understanding for AI.

A lot can happen in a moment of time: a girl kicking a ball, behind her on the path a woman walks her dog, on a park bench nearby a man is reading a book and high above a bird flies in the sky. Humans constantly absorb such moments through their senses and process them swiftly and effortlessly. When asked to describe such a moment, a person can quickly identify objects (girl, ball, bird, book), the scene (park) and the actions that are taking place (kicking, walking, reading, flying). ... " 

IBM Research Writes about Progress in Deep Learning

Recently have used deep learning from IBM to solve a difficult classification problem.

From IBM AI Research: 
New IBM Research distributed deep learning software achieves record performance for large neural network, large data set ... 

Deep learning is a widely used AI method to help computers understand and extract meaning from images and sounds and other data types using neural networks, a brain-inspired approach to computing. It holds promise to fuel breakthroughs in everything from consumer mobile app experiences to medical imaging diagnostics. Progress in accuracy and deploying deep learning at scale is limited by technical challenges that slow processing time to days and weeks. IBM Research AI experts have created distributed deep learning software, achieving record performance for image recognition accuracy and large neural networks composed of up to 250 GPUs, a special processor for large amounts of data. Developers and data scientists can now preview this technical milestone in version 4 of the PowerAI enterprise deep learning software.  ... "