IBM

Like any other tool such as a hammer or a knife, technology can be used not only for good but also for harm. Facial recognition, in particular, is often promoted as a convenient security measure but it can also be misused and abused for things like mass surveillance or racial profiling. Given the sensitivity of these topics in the past few days, IBM has made a public letter to the US Congress calling out such activities and ending its sale and development of its face recognition products until more favorable laws and systems are in place.

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IBM researchers have made a new battery discovery that could eliminate the need for heavy metals in battery production. IBM says that eliminating the need for heavy metals in battery production could transform the long-term sustainability of many elements of the energy infrastructure. Many batteries today need heavy metals like nickel and cobalt and pose significant environmental and humanitarian risks.

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IBM has made a breakthrough in quantum computing by demonstrating a way to control the quantum behavior of individual atoms. The discovery has demonstrated a new building block for quantum computation. The team demonstrated the use of single atoms as qubits for quantum information processing.

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Carbon may be commonplace in the grand scheme of elements in our universe, but some of its forms are much rarer than others - something IBM Research took as a challenge that could shake up future electronics. A team there, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, has created a so-called cyclocarbon ring for the first time.

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If you're the type of person who finds smartwatches to be generally boring devices, then boy does IBM have the patent to you. The company filed a patent for a smartwatch with an unfolding display way back in 2016, and thanks to that patent's recent publication by the USPTO, we're just now getting an idea of what it entails. If you thought folding phones were a bit on the ridiculous side, then this watch will surely elicit a similar reaction.

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IBM has revealed Hypertaste, an 'e-tongue' that can rapidly pick out the flavors in liquids. The company describes its creation as an AI-powered electronic tongue, one that can be used to fingerprint liquids that are less than suitable for ingestion, but that need to be identified more rapidly than is possible using traditional laboratories. Examples include remote water quality checks and testing for counterfeit alcohol.

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Spice company McCormick has revealed that it tapped IBM's artificial intelligence to bolster its flavor expertise. The company plans to launch a new product line called ONE later this year that features recipe mix flavors for a handful of popular dishes, including New Orleans Sausage and Tuscan Chicken. The new offerings are the by-product of McCormick's vast data and IBM's AI.

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IBM is the granddaddy in computing. Some might even call it the last surviving dinosaur. It has more or less survived lately on the server business but the rise of the cloud and cloud providers has seen its name overshadowed and almost forgotten. Now it’s adopting a strategy that may make it more enticing for those who want to move to the cloud without being locked in. The company has just announced a bid to acquire a fellow granddaddy, this time in the Linux space: Red Hat.

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IBM has trained an AI to help humans develop new fragrances for perfumes and other products. The system is called Philyra, and it involves machine learning algorithms that find new combinations of scents to produce novel fragrances. According to IBM, its AI can comb through existing combinations to spot "whitespaces" in which entirely new formulas can be formed.

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Thanks to popularity both in academic circles and commercial markets, AI research and technology have grown exponentially in the past few years. Now AI and neural networks can not only beat humans in games, they can also craft sometimes disturbing works of fiction. But one thing that AI have not yet been able to do sufficiently is to actually explain their “thinking” in plain language. IBM’s Project Debater can and it can be impressive or scary, depending on which side of the AI debate you’re on.

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A computer the size of a grain of rock salt is not only the world's smallest computer, IBM claims, but could be cheap enough to spread AI smarts and the blockchain ubiquitously. Shown off for the first time at IBM Think 2018, the company's annual research event, the tiny computer could have huge implications for making sure everything from medication to luxury goods are genuine rather than counterfeit.

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The folks at AIRBUS and IBM will bring a Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN (CIMON) disembodied robot head to the International Space Station this summer. This robot head was never really attached to a robot body - it was built specifically for the ISS - and a free-floating environment in which it'll function. This robot head will bring artificial intelligence to the ISS - almost like DAVID in Prometheus, or Ash in Alien. Not to worry!

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