From simulating new and more efficient materials to predicting how the stock market will change with greater precision, the ramifications of quantum computing for businesses are potentially huge. The world's biggest companies are now launching quantum computing programs, and governments are pouring money into quantum research. For systems that have yet prove useful, quantum computers are certainly garnering lots of attention. Quantum computers offer great promise for cryptography and optimization problems, and companies are racing to make them practical for business use. ZDNet explores what quantum computers will and won't be able to do, and the challenges that remain.

Between 1977 and 2014, 80 percent of ExxonMobil's internal research supported the idea that human activity was a contributor to climate change. But during that same period, 80 percent of the oil and gas provider's public statements instead expressed doubt whether climate change was caused by humans--or even real in the first place. To draw this conclusion, Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes used machine learning to review more than 200 internal documents, peer-reviewed research, and public statements from Exxon Mobil. The newly released paper, "Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications," exposes a decades-long pattern of public statements that sanitize the company's role in contributing to CO2 emissions. Oreskes and Supran used machine learning analysis to support two claims.

Employee activism and outside pressure have pushed big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google into promising to slash their carbon emissions. When Microsoft held an all-staff meeting in September, an employee asked CEO Satya Nadella if it was ethical for the company to be selling its cloud computing services to fossil fuel companies, according to two other Microsoft employees who described the exchange on condition they not be named. Such partnerships, the worker told Nadella, were accelerating the oil companies' greenhouse gas emissions. Microsoft and other tech giants have been competing with one another to strike lucrative partnerships with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and other energy firms, in many cases supplying them not just with remote data storage but also artificial intelligence tools for pinpointing better drilling spots or speeding up refinery production. The oil and gas industry is spending roughly $20 billion each year on cloud services, which accounts for about 10% of the total cloud market, according to Vivek Chidambaram, a managing director of Accenture's energy consultancy.

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND – Employee activism and outside pressure have pushed big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google to make promises to slash their carbon emissions. When Microsoft held an all-staff meeting in September, an employee asked CEO Satya Nadella if it was ethical for the company to be selling its cloud computing services to fossil fuel companies, according to two other Microsoft employees who described the exchange on condition they not be named. Such partnerships, the worker told Nadella, were accelerating the oil companies' greenhouse gas emissions. Microsoft and other tech giants have been competing with one another to strike lucrative partnerships with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and other energy firms, in many cases supplying them not just with remote data storage but also artificial intelligence tools for pinpointing better drilling spots or speeding up refinery production. The oil and gas industry is spending roughly $20 billion each year on cloud services, which accounts for about 10 percent of the total cloud market, according to Vivek Chidambaram, a managing director of Accenture's energy consultancy.

In this May 6, 2019 file photo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivers the keynote address at Build, the company's annual conference for software developers in Seattle. Microsoft and other tech giants have been competing to strike lucrative partnerships with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and other energy firms. One employee stood up to ask Microsoft CEO Nadella about the ethics of the company's oil and gas contracts at an all-staff meeting in Sept. 2019, and Nadella defended the partnerships. Employee activism and outside pressure have pushed big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google promising to slash their carbon emissions. When Microsoft held an all-staff meeting in September, an employee asked CEO Satya Nadella if it was ethical for the company to be selling its cloud computing services to fossil fuel companies, according to two other Microsoft employees who described the exchange on condition they not be named.

IBM has recently launched its inaugural IBM Women Leaders in A.I. in recognition of women advancing their company's journey to artificial intelligence across diverse industries around the globe--from California's County of Sonoma to South Africa's NedBank. There is an opportunity for women to not only contribute to Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) – one of the modern era's most important technologies – but help lead in its application across various industries around the globe. This position of influence is not solely to appease a diversity mandate or to stand guard against algorithmic biases. Women can stand up as one of the integral factors in bringing transparent, inclusive and trusted A.I. to business. Among those recognized on IBM's list of Women Leaders in A.I., we recognized a common success factor - shared a propensity for bringing stakeholders together for effective work.

ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company's Corporate Strategic Research (CSR) laboratory has an immediate opening for a full-time staff position in the area of machine learning in our Data Analytics and Optimization Section. Our facilities are centrally located in scenic Annandale, New Jersey, approximately one hour from both New York City and Philadelphia. The successful candidate will join a dynamic group of scientists performing breakthrough research for the Corporation, developing new scientific approaches and innovative solutions using state-of-the-art clusters and GPU machines. We are seeking a talented and creative individual to conduct fundamental research in machine learning, statistics, signal processing and pattern recognition. This researcher will seek solutions for a multitude of challenges involving large-scale physics, chemistry, geophysics and engineering data sets and models.

ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company's Corporate Strategic Research (CSR) laboratory has an immediate opening for a full-time staff position in the area of machine learning in our Data Analytics and Optimization Section. Our facilities are centrally located in scenic Annandale, New Jersey, approximately one hour from both New York City and Philadelphia. The successful candidate will join a dynamic group of scientists performing breakthrough research for the Corporation, developing new scientific approaches and innovative solutions using state-of-the-art clusters and GPU machines. We are seeking a talented and creative individual to conduct fundamental research in machine learning, statistics, signal processing and pattern recognition. This researcher will seek solutions for a multitude of challenges involving large-scale physics, chemistry, geophysics and engineering data sets and models.