Scientists make major quantum teleportation breakthrough

Scientists achieved quantum teleportation across 2 entangled photons, one at each end of a 30km optical fibre channel. What’s special about the breakthrough is that it demonstrated that teleportation is possible over existing/classical communication channels (optical fibre cable in this case) instead of needing new specialised infrastructure and thus enhancing the practicality of the research. This could pave the way for networking across quantum computers, transmitting quantum bits (qubits) across distant devices, near instantly (only limited by speed of light).

References

Google introduces Willow, their latest, state-of-the-art quantum chip

The chip showcased two major achievements: a) exponential quantum error correction, b) 10 Septillion years faster than the fastest supercomputer measured via a standard benchmark test. The quantum error correction has been a challenge in the world of supercomputing to do with qubits not “holding” the information for long enough due to interference with other environmental particles. As these qubits are combined in arrays, the overall error rates across the array normally increase. However google was able to demonstrate an exponential reduction in error rates as the number of qubits increased in the system. The performance in the benchmark test are impressive but the computation in the test isn’t immediately practically relevant. Some practical future applications, as quantum computing becomes practically relevant include those in Artificial Intelligence. Training AI model increases in complexity as the models become increasingly complex. Quantum computing could bring practical AI applications that are out of reach for classical computing devices into the mainstream.

References

Trump’s 2nd term

Started 2nd term on Jan 20th

  • Seems serious(!!!) about wanting Greenland, a Danish territory
  • Wants to change Citizenship rights, deniying visa’s to children of illegal immigrants and those on temporary visas; Birthright Citizenship is currently enshrined in the US Consituation
  • One of the many Executive Orders signed was to create a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk; the department is expected to make dramatic cuts in employment in the government, promoting efficiencies and modernizing how the government operates.
  • Pulls out of Paris Climate Agreement, an international deal to limit global warming
  • Gave TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with US law demanding TikTok’s US business be divested; TikTok did go dark for a few hours starting 19/Jan to comply with the Biden Government issued Divest-or-Ban law, until Trump gave the app the 75-day extension

Reference

Klarna’s CEO says they stopped hiring thanks to AI

CEO said they were of the opinion that “AI can already do all the jobs that we as humans do” in an interview. While I couldn’t access the actual interview, the analysis on publications such as Techcrunch[1], Entrepreneur[2] and Business Insider[3] all seem to indicate this was more sound-bites than an extraordinary fact. Karna seems to be in a natural cycle of growth and consolidation when it comes to thes size of its workforce and is leveraging AI in ways similar to other businesses. Karna has been hiring humans for several open positions and its use of AI supplements and improves the effectiveness and efficiency of human employees. Klarna’s press lead said the CEO’s comments were “directionally true” and “simplifying for brevity in a broadcast interview”.

References

Zuckerberg on AI coding agent

Zuckerberg believes 2025 is the year when AI-agents become good enough to do some coding tasks that normally mid-level engineers do. Contrary to some click-bait headlines, Zuck didn’t imply that this would mean all mid-level engineers will be replaced. Instead, AI-agents will make engineers more effective, freeing up their time for higher-level tasks. Demand for mid-level engineers may reduce as a result OR the demand may remain the same, with employers getting a lot more “output” from each engineer.

Referneces

Kids get more imaginative and adventurous as they turn 3

My daughter is turning 3 in a couple of days, so I thought I would read about what to expect. Key takeaways: more imaginative role-plays, which have kinds already started are to be expected; I need to invest more in reading time with her :D ## References

Bill Gates: Trump, Musk and how my neurodiversity made me

Bill Gates, once the world’s richest man was diagnosed “on the autism spectrum” and believes his neurodiversity gave him the superpower to be able to concentrate deeply for long periods of time. This superpower played an important role in his professional success in life and the founding of Microsoft with Paul Allen. Bill Gates supported the Democrats in the last US presidential elections, donating $50mn to their campaign. But Trump is in power now which makes him the most powerful person in the world. Gates did meet Trump over a 3 hour dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Gates was being practical and accepting reality with the visit. He said “Well, he [Trump] is the most powerful person in the world and his decision over whether to consider changing HIV funding alone would make the trip worth it, or to encourage Pakistan and Afghanistan to take polio eradication seriously.”. Gates also doesn’t seem to understand why Musk gets so involved in politics and in other country’s affairs, referring to Musk’s recent comments about Nigel Farage and the “grooming gangs” story in the UK.

References

DeepSeek

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company released a new model, R1, that appears to perform at par with those released by current market leaders such as OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta and Anthropic. What’s particularly of interest is the claim that DeepSeek’s model has been trained using less than the latest, state-of-the-art, GPUs from Nvidia. The model has still been built using GPUs though, the older, less powerful ones. The so what? This means that the running hypothesis that huge capital investments in GPU and compute infrastructure, that many companies including Alphabet, Meta and Amazon have been investing in, may not be necessary to make powerful (the current definition of powerful in this context = think of what ChatGPT can do today) AI applications. The initial market reaction meant Nvidia’s stock fell by 17% on 27/Jan, losing $600bn in market cap. Among other things, the launch of DeepSeek is being seen by some as a vindication of Apple’s strategy to not invest billions into Capital Expenditure to build vast GPU powered compute infra in favour of its work on Apple Intelligence which is meant to largely run on the consumer device with Apple’s focus on privacy. There’s also been news of OpenAI claiming the DeepSeek used OpenAI’s proprietary models to train its own R1 model, which if true, would be a breach of Intellectual Property laws.

References

Google offers voluntary exit to US based platform and devices employees

After an internal merge of 2 large organisations, Google has offered employees of its US based Platform and Devices team, working on Android, Pixel hardware etc voluntary exits. Google wants the employees who remain to be “deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency”.

References

What is this?

Just trying to carve out time to read/watch/learn more when I can. Posting about it somewhat publicly is meant to nudge me when the motivation starts to dwindle.

Inspired by Chamath Palihapitiya’s What I read this week series.