Affiliation Influences Our Fear of Data Collection

 Sciam talks fear of data collection.

Political Affiliation Influences Our Fear of Data Collection, By Scientific American, June 7, 2022

Instead of trusting or distrusting government surveillance based on which party is in power, Americans need to demand transparency into how the government as a whole is gaining access to and using their data.

Over the past year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) made more than three million warrantless queries on the data of U.S. residents collected by both the government and private companies. A shrinking share of Americans support such warrantless government surveillance, yet we have not effectively advocated against the growing surveillance of our personal data.

That is because we are not taking a principled view on government surveillance as a whole. Instead, we are starting to see viewpoints devolve into ostracization and hatred of the "other." Our research suggests that Americans' fears about government surveillance change based on who is in power and what we fear that political party may do with our data.

From Scientific American   

View Full Article    

Drone Spotting With Fly Eyes

Biomimicry example

AIs Spot Drones with Help from Fly Eye

Scientific American, Monique Brouillette, April 20, 2022

Researchers at the University of South Australia, defense firm Midspar Systems, and Australia's Flinders University have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for visual drone detection. The researchers reverse-engineered the visual system of the hoverfly—whose compound eyes can separate relevant information from noise—to develop a tool that filters out noisy data. They fed the algorithm spectrograms based on acoustic data from outdoors as drones flew by. The algorithm was able to amplify data related to the frequencies emitted by drones, while reducing background noise from other sources. The researchers found that it could identify drones up to 50% farther away than conventional AI systems..... ' 

National Strategic Computing Reserve

 Good proposal, with strong initial emphasis on security. 

The U.S. Needs a National Strategic Computing Reserve

By Scientific American,  June 9, 2021

Last spring, as the world was coming to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists started to make rapid progress in understanding the disease. Much of that progress was aided by world-class supercomputers and data systems, and research results advanced with unprecedented efficiency.

Long-term investments in basic research and infrastructure, and the capacity to quickly leverage resources to respond to crisis, underlie the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium that delivered those results.

Now, the leaders behind the HPC are proposing a National Strategic Computing Reserve (NSCR) that will provide funding, human talent, and cyberinfrastructure that investigators can access when future crises—whether an epidemic, record-setting wildfires, or severe storms—emerge.

From Scientific American

View Full SCIAM Article

Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers

More indications of increases in quantum computing speed,  when applied to particular kinds of problems.  But this does not mean this is available yet,  but in a quantum future when fault tolerant quantum computers of sufficient capacity are available 

Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers

Scientific American  by Daniel Garisto

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have for the first time coaxed a quantum computer composed of photons to outperform the fastest classical supercomputers. The Jiuzhan system executed Gaussian boson sampling, detecting 76 photons versus classical supercomputers' previous record of five. Jiuzhan combines lasers, mirrors, prisms, and photon detectors, and its achievement is only the second demonstration of quantum primacy to date. UTSC's Chao-Yang Lu said independent corroboration that quantum computing principles can enable primacy on totally different hardware "gives us confidence that in the long term ... useful quantum simulators and a fault-tolerant quantum computer will become feasible."