1. Emerging Information Technologies
Charles C. Tappert
Seidenberg School of CSIS
Pace University, New York

2. Agenda Teaching Emerging Information Technologies
Technology Life Cycle – puts into context what we mean by an “emerging technology”
Current Emerging Information Technologies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies
Collective Human-Computer Intelligence
Quantum Computing
Cybersecurity and Biometrics
Internet Platform Businesses
Blockchain
Conclusions
Many security issues in Emerging Information Technologies
Teaching in this area is rich with growth opportunities

3. Teaching Emerging IT 20 Years
The learning objectives:
Learn the current important emerging and disruptive technologies and their application
Understand their potential impact on science, engineering, business, and national security
Learn to apply these technologies to their research and engineering projects
Gain awareness of the security, cybersecurity, and ethical issues that decision makers at all levels face

4. Technology Life Cycle S Curve
Growth
Exponential growth
Time

5. Technology Life Cycle Kurzweil Kendall Invention Emergence
Acceptance (established)
Sublime (fully appreciated)
Surplus
Kurzweil
0. Precursor (dream/contemplation)
Invention
Development (emergence)
Maturity (established)
Pretenders (threat by upstart)
Obsolescence (by new tech)
Antiquity
Discuss the life cycle of some technologies

6. Technology Life Cycle
Although the technology curve flattens out, new technologies can emerge to keep growth exponential
For example, the growth of computer technology – from mechanical switches in 1890s to relay-based switches in 1940s to vacuum tubes in 1950s to transistors in the 1960s to integrated circuits in the 1970s and to 3D chips in 2000s
Just-in-time arrival of new technologies pick up from the flattening technology curve to maintain exponential growth (linear growth on a log scale)
Often the arrival of new technologies is accelerated through synergies, resulting in accelerated returns (change) approaching double exponential growth

7. Technology Life Cycle

8. Technology Life Cycle
An example of the accelerated growth of a technology through synergistic effects of enabling technologies is the human genome project ( )
It was estimated to take 1000 years of research but was completed in 13 years
Perhaps it should not surprise us that a 1000 year project took only 13 years at a double exponential rate since 210 ~ 1000

9. Technology Life Cycle
Recently, the maturity phase of the life cycle S-shaped curve has become steeper for many new technologies
People are adopting technologies at an unprecedented pace – examples are social media and smart phones
It is difficult to predict the impact of technologies like computer vision and speech recognition that are at the cusp of a steep maturity curve
In business, predicting the adoption rate accurately can be the difference between success and failure

10. Technology Life Cycle

11. Emerging Information Technologies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) & related technologies
Collective Human-Computer Intelligence
Quantum Computing
Cybersecurity and Biometrics
Internet Platform Businesses
Blockchain

12. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to an artificial creation of human-like intelligence
So far AIs have been in specific narrow areas
In 1997 IBM’s Deep Blue beat the world’s best human chess player
In 2011 IBM’s Watson beat the world’s best human jeopardy players
In 2017 Google's AlphaGo beat the world's best human Go player
The Google search engine quickly finds information
Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa voice services answer questions
There is currently a focus on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), AIs that can perform any intellectual task that a human can perform

13. Artificial Intelligence
Sub-areas overlap

14. Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning
Deep learning is a machine learning method based on learning data representations, as opposed to task-specific algorithms
Requires massive training data – big data – winning the major contests

15. Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning – Historical Notes
Leibniz (17th century) – derivative chain rule
Rosenblatt (late 1950s) – Perceptron learning
Minsky & Papert (1969) – critique of Perceptrons caused 15-year “AI winter”
Rumelhart, et al. (1986) – first successful experiments with back-propagation
Revived neural network research, peaked early 1990s
2006 – began modern deep learning era
From Deep Learning, Goodfellow, Bengio, and Courville, MIT Press 2016

16. Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning
Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo beats world’s best Go player
China’s Face++

17. Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning - Robotics
Amazon not yet found a digital hand grabber
Amazon brings shelves to humans who grab & box the right products
Google solving robot grasping – letting robots learn themselves

18. Artificial Intelligence
The data scientist Venn diagram – big data analytics

19. AGI – The Singularity
The hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization
According to this hypothesis, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.
When? – 10% chance by 2022, 50% by 2040, 90% by 2075
Video0 Video1 video2 video3

20. Artificial Intelligence Problems Unintended damage from social media
2016 US presidential election and Brexit campaign
Cambridge Analytica accessed Facebook user profiles to send targeted ads to influence the election and Brexit
2018 MIT study – Twitter fake news is shared 70% more often than factual information
2018 United Nations report accused Facebook of enabling religious persecution in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, many were killed
2019 book by Roger McNamee, Zucked, says Facebook creating a political and cultural crisis, and a serious danger to democracy

21. Collective Human-Computer Intelligence Superminds
A supermind is a group of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelligent.
Collective intelligence, a property of a “supermind”, is the result of groups of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelligent.
There are two types of intelligence: specialized intelligence, the ability to achieve specific goals effectively in a given environment, and general intelligence, the ability to achieve a wide range of different goals effectively in different environments.
The definition of general intelligence is similar to that used by psychologists and what is measured by intelligence tests
Reference – Superminds by Thomas Malone, 2018

22. Quantum Computing
Quantum computing is the use of quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform computation – video1 video2
There is a quantum computing race among the tech giants Google, IBM, and Microsoft, including to a lesser extent Amazon and China’s Alibaba
Governments, particularly America and China, are funding work in the area with the concern that quantum computers may soon crack current encryption methods, giving the country that gets there first a major advantage

23. Quantum Computing
RSA asymmetric encryption method

24. Funding in Quantum Computing
There is considerable funding now available
In the U.S. in January 2019, the National Quantum Initiative Act, authorizing $1.2 billion in investment over the next 5-10 years, was signed into law, and is being organized now into different areas that researchers can apply to for funding in quantum computing

25. Teaching High School Students
We have taught short courses at several high schools
For example, a 5-day course was taught to the 12th grade at a Brooklyn high school
Day 1 – quantum bit (qubit), |ket> notation for vectors, explanation of gates, matrix notation for kets and gates
Day 2 – superposition and entanglement
Day 3 – Grover’s algorithm
Day 4 – return to superposition and entanglement, present Bloch sphere representation of a qubit
Day 5 – students split into teams, each team reworked set of instructor slides into their own

26. Teaching High School Students
IBM Composer for Creating Quantum Programs

27. Teaching High School Students
Day 5 – student survey ranked topics of interest

28. Quantum Entanglement
Quantum entanglement occurs when pairs of particles are generated such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the other, even when the particles are separated by a large distance
Einstein referred to this as "spooky action at a distance"

29. Photon Polarization Demonstration
Quantum computing is a beautiful combination of quantum physics, CS, and information theory
Quantum bits are the fundamental units of information in quantum computing, just as bits are fundamental units in classical computing
Just as there are many ways to realize classical bits, there are many ways to realize qubits
We examine the behavior of polarized photons, a possible realization of quantum bits

30. Photon Polarization Demonstration
A simple experiment illustrates some of the non-intuitive behavior of quantum systems
Minimal equipment required
Laser pointer and three polarized lenses (polaroids) available from any camera supply store
Common polarized lenses
Polarized sunglasses are polarized vertically to filter out glare which is mostly polarized horizontally
And 3D movie glasses contain a pair of different polarizing filters to see the same scene from slightly different perspectives

31. Photon Polarization Demonstration
Demonstration procedure:
Insert polaroid A to filter horizontally, insert C to also filter horizontally, then slowly rotate C vertically to block the horizontally polarized photons
Then insert polaroid B and rotate it to allow photons to pass
Explain what is happening
Image from Rieffel & Polak (2014)

32. Photon Polarization Demonstration
Because it is difficult to have students hold a laser pointer, three filters, and a screen, we purchased a laboratory rack to hold these items
Rack with holders and screen, laser pointer, and three polarization filters for hands-on demos

33. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity, also called information technology security, concerns the technologies, processes, and practices designed to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access
Pace University is NSA and DHS designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education.
Funded by NSA and NSF we conduct summer cybersecurity workshops for high school teachers and for high school students.
Working with the Department of Defense we offer Information Assurance Scholarships.
Working with the National Crime Agency, we conduct mobile application research.
We also run a Computer Forensics Laboratory in NYC

34. Cybersecurity Cyber Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid
A guest speaker at our summer cybersecurity workshop last week, the Director of Cybersecurity Forensics at ConEd, discussed the Cyber Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid in 2015

35. Cybersecurity Cyber Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid
The attackers demonstrated a variety of capabilities:
Spear phishing s, variants of the BlackEnergy 3 malware, and the manipulation of Microsoft Office documents that contained the malware to gain a foothold into the IT networks of the electricity companies
They demonstrated the capability to gain a foothold and harvest credentials and information to gain access to the Industrial Control System (ICS) network
Additionally, the attackers showed expertise, not only in network connected infrastructure; such as Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPSs), but also in operating the ICSs through supervisory control system; such as the Human Machine Interface (HMI)

36. Cybersecurity Cyber Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid
Technical components used by the attackers:
Spear phishing to gain access to business networks of the oblenergos
Identification of BlackEnergy 3 malware at the impacted oblenergos
Theft of credentials from the business networks
Use virtual private networks to enter Indus. Control System network
Use existing remote access tools within the environment or issuing commands directly from a remote station similar to an operator
Serial‐to‐ethernet communications devices impacted at firmware level
Use of modified KillDisk to erase the master boot record of impacted organization systems as well as the targeted deletion of some logs
Utilizing UPS systems to impact connected load with a scheduled service outage
Telephone denial‐of‐service attack on the call center

37. Cybersecurity Cyber Attack on the Ukrainian Power Grid
Ukraine Attack Consolidated Technical Components

38. Biometrics
Biometrics refers to the measurement of human characteristics.
Biometrics is an area of research for our doctoral students
We focus on the not-well-studied biometrics because it is easier to do original research and publish results.
Understandably, it is hard to compete with companies specializing in the established biometrics, such as fingerprint, face, iris, and voice.
The keystroke biometric involves the authentication or recognition of a typist and Pace University currently has the world’s best keystroke biometric system
In the 2016 major biometrics conference, Dr. John V. Monaco, a Pace PhD graduate working for Army Research Labs, overwhelmingly won the Keystroke Biometrics Ongoing Competition, his 15 entries outperformed all the entries from the three other competitors (KBOC, 2016).

39. Internet Platform Businesses
A platform is a digital environment characterized by near-zero marginal cost of access, reproduction, and distribution
Examples:
Uber owns no vehicles
Facebook creates no content
Airbnb owns no real estate

40. Blockchain
Blockchain technology has been known as the original digital currency platform since the development of Bitcoin, the first and the largest of the cryptocurrencies
Blockchain was invented by a person (or group of people) using the name Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008
Bitcoin billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (June 2019)
Facebook Announces Project Libra, Its Wildly Ambitious Plan to Bring Cryptocurrency to the Masses in 2020 (Gov’t fears criminal use)
Blockchain is an open-source public ledger of all transactions among participating members with the potential to revolutionize business interactions
IBM Blockchain Platform: the next generation of blockchain for business

41. Blockchain
2018 Maersk and IBM Blockchain Shipping Solution

42. Conclusions Many security issues in Emerging Information Technologies
Teaching in this area is rich with growth opportunities
New emerging IT courses – two in CSIS, one in Lubin
The first is a rigorous computer science course for advanced masters and PhD students that covers the underlying theory of these technologies in detail and has midterm and final exams
The second, at the undergraduate level, covers the highlights of the technologies and is designed to attract and retain undergraduates
The third, already approved, is a course that focuses primarily on the business aspects of the emerging information technologies