Lifeboat Foundation

Last week the President Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) met (webinar) to review policy recommendations around three sub-committee reports: 1) Industries of the Future (IotF), chaired be Dario Gil (director of research, IBM); 2) Meeting STEM Education and Workforce Needs, chaired by Catherine Bessant (CTO, Bank of America), and 3) New Models of Engagement for Federal/National Laboratories in the Multi-Sector R&D Enterprise, chaired by Dr. A.N. Sreeram (SVP, CTO, Dow Corp.)

Yesterday, the full report (Recommendations For Strengthening American Leadership In Industries Of The Future) was issued and it is fascinating and wide-ranging. To give you a sense of the scope, here are three highlights taken from the executive summary of the full report:

The best way to prevent this is by focusing on the basics. America needs a major all-of-society push to increase the number of U.S. students being trained in both the fundamentals of math and in the more advanced, rigorous, and creative mathematics. Leadership in implementing this effort will have to come from the U.S. government and leading technology companies, and through the funding of ambitious programs. A few ideas come to mind: talent-spotting schemes, the establishment of math centers, and a modern successor to the post-Sputnik National Defense Education Act, which would provide math scholarships to promising students along with guaranteed employment in either public or private enterprises.

Forget about “AI” itself: it’s all about the math, and America is failing to train enough citizens in the right kinds of mathematics to remain dominant.

By Michael Auslin

Continue reading “Why China’s Race For AI Dominance Depends On Math” »

All chemistry lab courses will be taught entirely remotely for fall 2020 with potential optional in-person experience, Merriam Professor of Chemistry and Chemistry Undergraduate Chair Jeffrey Winkler said.

Scientists suggest a desktop quantum computer based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) could soon be on its way to a classroom near you. Although the device might not be suited to handle large quantum applications, the makers say it could help students learn about quantum computing.

SpinQ Chief Scientist Prof. Bei Zeng from University of Guelph, announced the SpinQ Gemini, a two-qubit desktop quantum computer, at the industry session of the Quantum Information Processing (QIP2020) conference, which is held recently in Shenzhen, China. It is the first time that a desktop quantum computer is commercially available, according to the researchers.

SpinQ Gemini is built by the state-of-the-art technology of permanent magnets, providing 1T magnetic field, running at room temperature, and maintenance free. It demonstrates quantum algorithms such as Deutsch’s algorithm and Grover’s algorithm for teaching quantum computing to university and high school students, also provides advanced models for quantum circuit design and control sequence design for researchers.

The recent killings of unarmed individuals such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade have sparked a national conversation about the treatment of Black people—and other minorities—in the United States.

“What we’re seeing today is a close examination of the hardships and indignities that people have faced for a very long time because of their race and ethnicity,” said Kyle Ratner, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara. As a social psychologist, he is interested in how social and biological processes give rise to intergroup bias and feelings of stigmatization.

According to Ratner, “It is clear that people who belong to historically marginalized groups in the United States contend with burdensome stressors on top of the everyday stressors that members of non-disadvantaged groups experience. For instance, there is the trauma of overt racism, stigmatizing portrayals in the media and popular culture, and systemic discrimination that leads to disadvantages in many domains of life, from employment and education to healthcare and housing to the legal system.”

I often hear a number of our non US members, of which there are many, have a hard time understanding why Americans are the way we are.

This documentary is non partisan, highly accurate, and in depth. Worth your time if you want to understand Americans, our attitudes, cultures, and thinking.

Why did the United States become a global superpower? America The Story of Us is an epic 12-hour television event that explores the country’s remarkable journey.

Happy birthday to the World most important Entrepreneur (Olorogun Elon Musk). We at the Ogba Educational Clinic and Artificial intelligence Hub celebrate and wish to immortalize you by Setting up a club after you (The Elon Musk Club). This is in line with our vision to create small Elon’s that would eventually outdo you from Africa.

Join us for an online webinar on Tuesday, June 30th at 9:30 a.m. ET with MIT faculty member and expert in machine learning, Professor Devavrat Shah.

This webinar is a way to understand the topics covered in the ‘Machine Learning: From Data to Decisions’ online course, ask questions, and get a preview of the content.

This is a 60-minute webinar with Prof. Devavrat Shah to learn more about the upcoming Machine Learning: From Data to Decisions (Online) Program, followed by a Q&A session.

Continue reading “Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Live Webinar: MIT Professional Education’s Machine Learning: From Data to Decisions. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar” »

Now that the world is in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, governments are quickly deploying their own cocktails of tracking methods. These include device-based contact tracing, wearables, thermal scanning, drones, and facial recognition technology. It’s important to understand how those tools and technologies work and how governments are using them to track not just the spread of the coronavirus, but the movements of their citizens.

Contact tracing is one of the fastest-growing means of viral tracking. Although the term entered the common lexicon with the novel coronavirus, it’s not a new practice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says contact tracing is “a core disease control measure employed by local and state health department personnel for decades.”

Traditionally, contact tracing involves a trained public health professional interviewing an ill patient about everyone they’ve been in contact with and then contacting those people to provide education and support, all without revealing the identity of the original patient. But in a global pandemic, that careful manual method cannot keep pace, so a more automated system is needed.