Smaller, better, faster, smarter

This week we’re talking about atom data storage, aspiring Swedish programmers, insane AI productivity, superfast supercomputers

INNOVATION .

single atom data storage for the first time

Humanity has just stored data in a single atom for the first time. To put that in context, some commercially-available devices use approximately one million atoms to store one bit of digital information. The new breakthrough is a big improvement from the previous smallest data storage record, in clusters of three to 12 atoms.

The milestone also has several implications, one being that magnetic storage could be a thousand times as dense as current hard drives and memory chips. It could even serve as a basis for quantum computing. If you’re curious, it was a Holmium (Ho) atom.

EDUCATION .

Sweden wants its first graders to think like programmers

The Swedish secondary school curriculum will include teaching algorithmic thinking and logic in first grade. Swedish students will begin learning to programme in fourth grade, within their algebra course. The Swedish Minister of Education stated a not unsurprising reason for the change, revamping their education system would provide a more technically skilled workforce.

This follows a trend of countries such as Australia, Germany, and the UK changing their national curriculum to include coding classes at a young age. Go Sweden!

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE .

360,000 hours reduced to seconds

JP Morgan Chase’s COIN program uses machine learning (a subfield of artificial intelligence) to automate the interpretation of commercial loan agreements. The software recently did the equivalent of 360,000 hours of work in only a couple seconds. It’s not only fast, but much less error-prone than lawyers and loan officers.

So how much time is 360,000 hours in relation to an actual career? At a 40hr work week, that’s 173 years of work done in just a few seconds. The bank has been investing heavily (nearly $10 billion) in technology. It seems to be paying off.

COMPUTING .

China 🇨🇳builds the fastest supercomputer, it’s 3x faster

There was a lot of buzz last week regarding IBM’s plans to build a quantum computer… ready possibly in a few years. But there’s major news right now in computing. Sunway TaihuLight is the new world’s fastest supercomputer.

The Sunway TaihuLight is not only faster than the previous ‘champion’, Tianhe-2, but three times faster. That is a massive improvement. The current and past record holders are Chinese-made. Sunway TaihuLight is five times faster than the United States’ best supercomputer (ranked 3rd). The news has likely resulted in a spike of ‘supercomputer race’ google searches.

…let’s end with some new futuristic design