At the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city, IBM’s Watson supercomputer is currently in use as a tool to help train physicians. The long-term goal is to deploy the computer as a way to help make diagnoses and perform other medical tasks. This makes you wonder, could robots and supercomputers someday replace human physicians?

In a recent essay for the Atlantic, Jonathan Cohn took a deeper look at the idea. Cohn writes the following about IBM and other scientists and engineer’s visions for the future of medical computing:

“Specifically, they imagine the application of data as a ‘disruptive’ force, upending health care in the same way it has upended almost every other part of the economy—changing not just how medicine is practiced but who is practicing it,” says Cohn. “In Silicon Valley and other centers of innovation, investors and engineers talk casually about machines’ taking the place of doctors, serving as diagnosticians and even surgeons—doing the same work, with better results, for a lot less money.”

While the idea seems a bit far-fetched, it does seem possible that AI systems could eventually be used as a supplement to human physicians, and perhaps even to nurses. This would mean better healthcare at a cheaper cost since they would need considerably fewer nurses and doctors to staff a hospital then are needed now.

Specifically I could see the idea of robotic machines that can do incisions and surgical operations while using logic skills. Things that require “beside manners” like talking to the patients and breaking bad news should be best left to human beings, though. It is pretty hard to imagine a robot telling you that you have just six months to live, or other news that requires empathy.

What do you think, could the next few decades bring to pass a future hospital setting where the majority of the staff is actually computers and robots or is this near-Jetson-like image of the future of healthcare not as plausible as some would like to think?

[ source ]

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And that’s why companies like IBM are really exploring silicone alternatives. One very promising direction is with carbon nanotubes and IBM has just reached a major milestone. They have created a new computer chip based on carbon nanotube technology that has more than 10,000 transistors. This is a far cry from the current generation of silicone-based microprocessors, but it does demonstrate a lot of potential for carbon nanotubes moving forward.

As you might remember, carbon nanotubes are constructed with sheets of cabon that are just a single atom thick, rolling them into a cylinder. These conduct electricity better than silicon and have the perfect shape to act as transistors. Unfortunately, they have to be completely free of inpurities and they have to be aligned perfectly. They’re harder to work with, but they could hold the future of computing because carbon nanotubes can also scale much smaller than silicone.

It’s unlikely that we’ll have a Nexus 2013 next year based on carbon nanotube technology, but with the continuing research and innovation at places like IBM, the future of Moore’s Law might still be viable.

[Source]

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Actual reality can be confusing and overwhelming, and that’s why we oftentimes turn to the Internet for help. IBM is taking that to a new level with an AR mobile shopping app. The example given is when you’re cruising down the cereal aisle and you don’t know which one you want to buy.

When you take out your smartphone or tablet and launch the yet unnamed IBM shopping assistant app, it uses the camera to recognize the different products on the shelf. Then, the app will “instantly display recommendations and offers based on their specific preferences.” The demo here, for instance, shows that one of the cereals is “low in sugar” and that you get a half-gallon of milk for free when you buy this box of cereal.

The superimposed information that pops up in the app is hardly random either. It’s supposed to tap into your buying history, as well as looking at things like price, consumer rating, and environmentally friendly packaging. You can pre-set the characteristics that are important to you and then you can use the app to pan across a shelf of products. The app will then highlight the item that best matches your preferences.

“The idea of standing in an aisle in the supermarket and having your mobile device point out the gluten-free cookies you need can be a real time saver,” said project leader Amnon Ribak. “This has the potential to completely change the shopping experience from one of hunting, reading, and searching to simply picking up those products you prefer.”

I imagine the future of this could be integration with Google’s Project Glass.

[Source]

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Today’s car batteries are massive, yet can only go about 100 miles, and can never come close to gasoline. But a new technology currently being developed under IBM’s “Battery 500 Project”, could result in a battery that would power cars for more than 500 miles on a single charge. They are developing a light-weight, ultra high-density lithium-air battery, or air-breathing battery, which actually breathes air.

In a lithium-air battery, oxygen will react with the soft element lithium to create lithium peroxide and electrical energy. When the battery is recharged, the process is reversed and oxygen is released. Since the oxygen used for the reaction comes from the atmosphere, the battery will be much lighter compared to conventional batteries.

And these batteries have a much higher energy density than lithium-ion ones. Theoretically, the maximum energy density of lithium-air batteries is 12 kWh/kg. That’s around 15 times greater than li-ion, but more importantly comparable to gasoline. If the project is a success, lithium-air might not only replace li-ion, but also gasoline. That won’t happen anytime soon, but it’s certainly possible.

The talks about lithium-air battery actually started way back in 1970, but at the time we did not have the materials required to build one. But li-air is possible today as we have graphene and carbon nanotubes, and also IBM’s famous computer architecture, Blue Gene. IBM has received assistance from Asahi Kasei and Central Glass.

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Before making the jump to Wall Street, IBM’s Watson has already been busy working for health care organizations, putting its natural language interpretation skills to good use. With the new job at Citigroup, Watson will work primarily with risk management, helping to “analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.”

To get Watson ready for the job, Citigroup is training our robot overlord about regulatory practices and financial jargon. Presumably, Watson will be a little more ethical than some of the not-so-nice people on Wall Street, sticking to the facts and minimizing the shady practices. Then again, Watson can only be as ethical as its employers that program it.

There are already plenty of people who use computer programs to pick their stocks, make their trades, and otherwise guide their financial decisions. This is just the next logical step.

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In a conventional modern war, you want to arm yourself with guns, tanks, and fighter jets. In the war between Apple and Google, the ammunition comes in the form of patents and let’s just say that Google has been busy with some stockpiling.

The latest acquisition by Google consists of 1,023 patents from IBM. Apple has been busy suing several of Google’s hardware partners, like HTC and Samsung, so Google is bringing in some heavy reinforcements with plenty of firepower. Remember that Google snatched up Motorola Mobility not that long ago too.

The current deal between IBM and Google has been confirmed by the higher-ups, but they’re not disclosing anything in terms of details just yet. It makes you wonder how much this arsenal of patents cost the search engine megagiant. This is in addition to another 1,030 patents that the big G already purchased from IBM in July.

Through all of this, the biggest winners have to be the lawyers handling all of these lawsuits. Ka-ching!

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We’ve seen what IBM can do when it comes to computers. IBM’s artificial intelligence computer system, Watson, beat record-holders Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a human-versus-machine match-up on Jeopardy that asserted Watson’s potential as supreme computer overlord. And showed off what IBM can do when it comes to AI.

To take it one step further, IBM is working on a new class of computer chips that are designed to imitate the human brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition. The chips’ processing power is similar to that of Watson. IBM hopes to use these chips in “cognitive computers.” These computers would learn through experience instead of being programmed. Just like the human brain.

“Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens,” said Dharmendra Modha, the project leader for IBM Research. “Or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments.”

There are several potential applications for the brain chips, including a sensor that could be placed in a grocery store and could read sights, smells and temperatures and would give an alert when it’s time to replace the wilted lettuce. Even better, the chips could be used in a system that monitors the world’s water supply by measuring things like temperature, pressure, wave height and acoustics, and then could give a warning when the computer thinks a tsunami is likely.

The first two prototype chips contain no biological components. Both chips have 256 artificial neurons, with one core containing 262,144 programmable synapses, and the other containing 65,536 learning synapses. So far, the chips have been able to complete navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification. The team hopes to eventually develop a one-square-centimeter chip with the equivalent of 1 million neurons and 10 billion synapses.

The project is called SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics), and Phases 0 through 1 have already been completed. DARPA has given the project $21 million in funding for Phase 2.

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Why knock off just one product when you can Frankenstein them all together to make for a mega product? That seems to be the idea behind this nameless contraption from China, but the net result actually looks pretty darn promising.

Let’s start with the iPhone 3GS. This version doesn’t have the home button (as rumored for the iPhone 5), but it has a similar black frame surrounded by a light-colored bezel. However, instead of a 3.5-inch Retina Display, it has a 10-inch 1026×600 screen. But wait. There’s more.

Then, you get the slide-out and tilt keyboard. This kind of tablet form factor is not unlike the Eee Pad Slider or the Samsung Sliding PC 7 Series, but the propping mechanism on the back looks like it’s borrowing a page out of the Nokia N97 mini. And what’s this I see in the middle of a QWERTY keyboard? Could it be the iconic red IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint nubby cap thing for a mouse pointer?

We don’t get to see this thing turned on, but it is running on a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 processor. So, I’m assuming it’s some build of Windows, but I can’t say for sure. Other specs include 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, and a 3700mAh lithium-ion battery. It ain’t branded, but the sellers are aiming at just a $250 price point. Cheap knockoffs have to stay cheap, right?

[Cloned in China]

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So what’s next for Watson? Does the computer’s alleged superiority over human intelligence mean we should bow down and welcome our new computer overlord? Anyone who fears that Watson is dead set on world domination can relax. Watson wants to help us, not destroy us.

IBM is looking at the possibility of Watson working in hospitals, where the computer would aid in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. Watson has a database that contains millions of documents. When a patient comes in with a mysterious set of symptoms the doctors can’t figure out, Watson would quickly sort through hundreds of medical dictionaries, academic studies, and encyclopedias and come up with a list of diagnosis possibilities.

Watson could come in handy for the police, pharmaceutical labs, hospitals and anywhere else that requires the processing of vast amounts of data. The computer has a long future of serving humans ahead of it, not the other way around.

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The latest news has IBM delivering enterprise secure mail for Android, iPhone, and Nokia Symbian smartphones. This is a major expansion of the IBM Lotus collaboration software, giving these platforms a suitably secure alternative to the BlackBerry service.

“The capabilities of Lotus Notes Traveler bring IBM’s enterprise-grade messaging to the iPhone, Symbian and later, Android-based phones, a big plus for those who want one device for their personal and business lives,” said GM chief strategy and technology officer Kirk Gutmann. “Downloading the Lotus Notes Traveler Companion app from the Apple App Store is great news, as is getting IBM social software on the BlackBerry.”

The future release of Lotus Notes Traveler includes mail, calendar and contacts support and it is no-charge software that will synchronize over-the-air between mobile devices and Lotus Domino data.

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