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LEGAL FUTURES Report: artificial intelligence will cause "structural collapse" of law firms by 2030. 1 December 2014 AI: computers that ‘think’ spell doom for many lawyers Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will dominate legal practice within 15 years, perhaps leading to the “structural collapse” of law firms, a report predicting the shape of the legal market has envisaged.

LEGAL FUTURES Report: artificial intelligence will cause "structural collapse" of law firms by 2030

Civilisation 2030: The near future for law firms, by Jomati Consultants, foresees a world in which population growth is actually slowing, with “peak humanity” occurring as early as 2055, and ageing populations bringing a growth in demand for legal work on issues affecting older people. This could mean more advice needed by healthcare and specialist construction companies on the building and financing of hospitals, and on pension investment businesses, as well as financial and regulatory work around the demographic changes to come; more age-related litigation, IP battles between pharmaceutical companies, and around so-called “geriatric-tech” related IP.

Keepod: Can a $7 stick provide billions computer access? The USB flash drive is one of the most simple, everyday pieces of technology that many people take for granted.

Keepod: Can a $7 stick provide billions computer access?

Now it's being eyed as a possible solution to bridging the digital divide, by two colourful entrepreneurs behind the start-up Keepod. Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi aim to combat the lack of access to computers by providing what amounts to an operating-system-on-a-stick. In six weeks, their idea managed to raise more than $40,000 (£23,750) on fundraising site Indiegogo, providing the cash to begin a campaign to offer low-cost computing to the two-thirds of the globe's population that currently has little or no access.

The test bed for the project is the slums of Nairobi in Kenya. SODAQ: a lego-like, plug-in, rapid prototyping board by SODAQ. This Brain-Inspired Microchip Is 9,000 Times Faster Than a Normal PC. This Could Be the First Animal to Live Entirely Inside a Computer. Why Did Google Pay $400 Million for DeepMind? How much are a dozen deep-learning researchers worth?

Why Did Google Pay $400 Million for DeepMind?

Apparently, more than $400 million. This week, Google reportedly paid that much to acquire DeepMind Technologies, a startup based in London that had one of the biggest concentrations of researchers anywhere working on deep learning, a relatively new field of artificial intelligence research that aims to achieve tasks like recognizing faces in video or words in human speech (see “Deep Learning”). The acquisition, aimed at adding skilled experts rather than specific products, marks an acceleration in efforts by Google, Facebook, and other Internet firms to monopolize the biggest brains in artificial intelligence research. Companies like Google expect deep learning to help them create new types of products that can understand and learn from the images, text, and video clogging the Web.

As advanced machine learning transitions from a primarily scientific pursuit to one with high industrial importance, Google’s bench is probably deepest. 19 Mind-Blowing Tricks Every iPhone And iPad User Should Know. How An Arcane Coding Method From 1970s Banking Software Could Save The Sanity Of Web Developers Everywhere. Does Your iPhone Have Free Will? — The Physics arXiv Blog. This Is the Most Complex Integrated Quantum Circuit Ever Made. Kate Darling, MIT Researcher Explores Peoples' Connection With Robots. The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think - James Somers. Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, thinks we've lost sight of what artificial intelligence really means.

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think - James Somers

His stubborn quest to replicate the human mind. Greg Ruffing “It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence.” Douglas Hofstadter is in a grocery store in Bloomington, Indiana, picking out salad ingredients. “If somebody meant by artificial intelligence the attempt to understand the mind, or to create something human-like, they might say—maybe they wouldn’t go this far—but they might say this is some of the only good work that’s ever been done.” Their operating premise is simple: the mind is a very unusual piece of software, and the best way to understand how a piece of software works is to write it yourself.

MIT's New Battery-Free Chip Captures Energy From Light, Heat And Vibrations at the Same Time. MIT scientists have developed a new electronic chip that could mark a critical first step towards battery-free systems.

MIT's New Battery-Free Chip Captures Energy From Light, Heat And Vibrations at the Same Time

The potent chip is able to operate on extremely low levels of power, and it can harvest energy from a range of sources – including sunlight, heat and environmental vibrations – at the same time, meaning it won’t go offline if one energy source cuts out. The team developing the new chip is led by MIT professor Anantha Chandrakasan. Caltech Develops 'Indestructible' Self-Healing Microchips For Computers and Smartphones. A team of engineers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has developed a way to create computer chips that can repair themselves.

Caltech Develops 'Indestructible' Self-Healing Microchips For Computers and Smartphones

The new chips can reportedly fix problems “ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure” in microseconds. These self-healing integrated chips may sound like the stuff of science-fiction, but if the team’s research is successful, they could potentially transform the electronics industry. IBM unveils computer fed by 'electronic blood' 18 October 2013Last updated at 13:05 ET By James Morgan Science reporter, BBC News, Zurich.

IBM unveils computer fed by 'electronic blood'

D-wave Articles on Engadget. D-Wave's Quantum Computer Courts Controversy. “I've been doing combative stuff since I was born,” says Geordie Rose, leaning back in a chair in his small, windowless office in Burnaby, Canada, as he describes how he has spent most of his life making things difficult for himself.

D-Wave's Quantum Computer Courts Controversy

Until his early 20s, that meant an obsession with wrestling — the sport that, he claims, provides the least reward for the most work. Quantum Computing Disentangled: A Look behind the D-Wave Buzz. The word “quantum” imbues any topic with instant mystique.

Quantum Computing Disentangled: A Look behind the D-Wave Buzz

Unfortunately, it often doubles as a “keep out” sign – a signal that an impenetrable quagmire of math and physics awaits anyone foolish enough to peer behind the label. “Quantum computing” is no exception: an air of inscrutable mystery surrounded the recent flurry of Internet stories about quantum computers. These machines exploit the mysterious phenomena of quantum mechanics – the physics of the ultra-tiny – to solve problems at speeds that leave traditional computers in the dust. Programming quantum computers for fun and profit. Scientists Confirm D-Wave's Computer Chips Compute Using Quantum Mechanics.

A strategy of "show, don't tell" for quantum computing seems to be paying off for Canadian company D-Wave.

Scientists Confirm D-Wave's Computer Chips Compute Using Quantum Mechanics

The latest validation for D-Wave's quantum computer claims comes from a paper published in the 28 June edition of the journal Nature Communications. Testing of the D-Wave chip—housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center—suggested that the device does use quantum mechanics to solve optimization problems. Once quantum computers scale up to have enough processing power, they could prove much faster than classical computers in tackling certain problems, according to the new paper. "Our work seems to show that, from a purely physical point of view, quantum effects play a functional role in information processing in the D-Wave processor," says Sergio Boixo, a researcher who led the study while he was a research assistant professor in computer science at the University of Southern California, in a press release.

Credit: Steve Cohn/USC News. D-Wave’s black box starts to open up. When Lockheed Martin purchased one of D-Wave's computers, speculation ran riot in the streets. Was it going to be used to debug flight control systems? Maybe it would be used to solve design problems. Perhaps it could replace an intern and make the coffee for everyone. Or maybe someone had pulled the wool over the eyes of the senior management and bilked them of several million dollars.

Google's Quantum Computer Proven To Be Real Thing (Almost) The D-Wave computer housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center in Marina del Rey, California. Photo: Mae Ryan/Wired Google bought one. IBM creates new foundation to program SyNAPSE chips inspired by human brain. Scientists from IBM today unveiled a breakthrough software ecosystem designed for programming silicon chips that have an architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the brain. IBM creates new foundation to program SyNAPSE chips inspired by human brain. Cloud computing for small business: Criminal and security threats and prevention measures. Home » Publications » Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice » 441-460 » Cloud computing for small business: Criminal and security threats and prevention measures Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 456. Don't Let OpenStack Hype Distort Your Selection of a Cloud Management Platform in 2012.

Awesome cloud computing infographic. Cloud computing spending will account for 25% of annual IT expenditure growth by 2012 and nearly a third of the growth the following year. “The battle for Cloud dominance is heating up, with the release of Office 365, it will be very interesting to see where the next big play comes from.” Artificial Humanity. Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses - tech - 28 May 2012. Silent Skype calls can hide secret messages - tech - 05 January 2013. Got a secret message to send? The Year in Computing—How 2012 Brought Better Artificial Intelligence and Much More. Network your stuff: Amateurs inventing a new internet - tech - 25 April 2012. IF AN email message were a physical object, what would it be? Pirate Bay plans to build aerial server drones with $35 Linux computer. Arm's latest processors aim to stretch internet's reach. 13 March 2012Last updated at 03:32 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter.

Photon heralds entanglement in new quantum repeater.