On August 13, The Knowledge Society (TKS), a Toronto-based innovation program for youth ages 13 to 17, will host the INNOVATE conference. Taking place at the Corus Entertainment Complex, INNOVATE will bring together 500 Canadian students who are interested in learning how to find and solve critical problems facing society today. The conference will give attendees the chance to hear from senior government officials, CEOs, and tech investors about the latest trends in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, financial markets, Internet of Things, robotics, and venture capital. "We need to encourage students to start creating the world they want to live in." "We have seen the power of youth first-hand at TKS, and believe that they are vastly underestimated," said Navid Nathoo, co-founder and executive director at TKS. "The best way to predict the future is to create it, and we need to encourage students to start creating the world they want to live in."

In his recent Nautilus essay, "The Kekulé Problem," Cormac McCarthy suggests that our unconscious mental processes are a modern echo of the prelinguistic minds of our prehistoric ancestors. He sees a stark contrast between language as a fairly recent cultural invention and the unconscious as an ancient biological system; the two are made from entirely different cloth, which is why, according to McCarthy, the unconscious is "loathe to speak to us." It is "just not used to giving verbal instructions and is not happy doing so," preferring to communicate with our consciousness in images and metaphors. As a linguist, I don't think I quite agree with the renowned novelist's characterization of the unconscious mind as fundamentally non-verbal--which I guess is Canadian polite-speak for: Wow, I really don't agree with that at all. The unconscious mind of the modern human--after language--is inexorably altered by it.

Burnaby-based D-Wave Systems is partnering with the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management to support quantum machine learning. D-Wave will work as a CDL partner to create a new track for startups in this field, and will complement CDL's existing machine learning track. The one-year program includes an introductory boot camp led by Dr. Peter Wittek, author of Quantum Machine Learning: What Quantum Computing means to Data Mining; instruction and technical support from D-Wave experts; access to a D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer; and the opportunity to use a D-Wave sampling service to enable machine learning computations and applications. "Helping to build an ecosystem of quantum AI and machine learning startups who develop applications speaks directly to D-Wave's vision: bringing quantum computing out of the research lab and into the real world," said Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave. "The convergence of quantum computing and machine learning will drive significant value to businesses and the world. We're proud to join with CDL and use their proven approach to facilitate the creation of early-stage companies who share that vision, and to help them use D-Wave's technology to jumpstart their businesses."

The purpose of language is to reveal the contents of our minds, says Julie Sedivy. We are social animals and language is what springs us from our isolated selves and unites us with others. Sedivy has taught linguistics and psychology at Brown University and the University of Calgary. She specializes in psycholinguistics, the psychology of language, notably the psychological pressures that give birth to language and comprehension. More recently Sedivy has been writing about language in her own life. She was born in Czechoslovakia, spent time as a kid in Austria and Italy, and came of age in Canada. She speaks Czech, French, and English, and gets by in Spanish, Italian, and German.

Reading medieval literature, it's hard not to be impressed with how much the characters get done--as when we read about King Harold doing battle in one of the Sagas of the Icelanders, written in about 1230. The first sentence bristles with purposeful action: "King Harold proclaimed a general levy, and gathered a fleet, summoning his forces far and wide through the land." By the end of the third paragraph, the king has launched his fleet against a rebel army, fought numerous battles involving "much slaughter in either host," bound up the wounds of his men, dispensed rewards to the loyal, and "was supreme over all Norway." What the saga doesn't tell us is how Harold felt about any of this, whether his drive to conquer was fueled by a tyrannical father's barely concealed contempt, or whether his legacy ultimately surpassed or fell short of his deepest hopes. In his short story "Forever Overhead," the 13-year-old protagonist takes 12 pages to walk across the deck of a public swimming pool, wait in line at the high diving board, climb the ladder, and prepare to jump.

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

Cybersecurity has long been a staple of science fiction, whether it's in movies like "Independence Day" or television shows like "Star Trek." Yet in our real 21st Century world, artificial intelligence is the new face of cybersecurity, even if it doesn't sound like Hal from "2001: A Space Odyssey." The most obvious place for added intelligence is to detect whether some pattern of network traffic is benign or hostile. Consider files being sent via email attachment. Do they contain viruses, trojans or other malware?

Artificial Life Researcher; Creator of Lucy, a Robot Babay Orangutan; Author, Creation: Life and How to Make It. Physicist, Universite' de la Mediterrane' (Marseille, France); Author: What is time?