Meta and IBM are joining more than 40 companies and organizations to create an industry group dedicated to open source artificial intelligence work, aiming to share technology and reduce risks. From a report: The coalition, called the AI Alliance, will focus on the responsible development of AI technology, including safety and security tools, according to a statement Tuesday. The group also will look to increase the number of open source AI models -- rather than the proprietary systems favored by some companies -- develop new hardware and team up with academic researchers.

Proponents of open source AI technology, which is made public by developers for others to use, see the approach as a more efficient way to cultivate the highly complex systems. Over the past few months, Meta has been releasing open source versions of its large language models, which are the foundation of AI chatbots.

Quantum computing is starting to fulfil its promise as a crucial scientific research tool, IBM researchers claim, as the US tech group attempts to quell fears that the technology will fail to match high hopes for it. From a report: The company is due to unveil 10 projects on Monday that point to the power of quantum calculation when twinned with established techniques such as conventional supercomputing, said Dario Gil, its head of research. "For the first time now we have large enough systems, capable enough systems, that you can do useful technical and scientific work with it," Gil said in an interview. The papers presented on Monday are the work of IBM and partners including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tokyo. They focus mainly on areas such as simulating quantum physics and solving problems in chemistry and materials science.

Expectations that quantum systems would by now be close to commercial uses prompted a wave of funding for the technology in recent years. But signs that business applications are further off than expected have led to warnings of a possible "quantum winter" of waning investor confidence and financial backing. IBM's announcements suggest the technology's main applications have not yet fully extended to the broad range of commercialisable computing tasks many in the field want to see. "It's going to take a while before we go from scientific value to, let's say, business value," said Jay Gambetta, IBM's vice-president of quantum. "But in my opinion the difference between research and commercialisation is getting tighter."

China's presence is growing in cybersecurity technology, with companies such as Huawei and Tencent accounting for six of the top 10 global patent holdings in the sector as of August. From a report: Chinese companies have made headway in technological fields that affect economic security, according to industry insiders, as they focus on fostering their own tech amid the growing standoff between the U.S. and China. The rankings, compiled by Nikkei in cooperation with U.S. information services provider LexisNexis, are based on patents registered in 95 countries and regions, including Japan, the U.S., China and the European Union. Patent registrations were screened for the cybersecurity field using such factors as the international patent classification, with filings of the same patent in multiple countries counted as a single patent.

As of August, IBM led the rankings with 6,363 patents. Huawei Technologies came in second with 5,735 patents and Tencent Holdings placed third with 4,803. Other Chinese companies in the top 10 included financial services provider Ant Group in sixth with 3,922 patents, followed by power transmission company State Grid Corp. of China with 3,696, Alibaba Group Holding with 3,122 and sovereign wealth fund China Investment with 3,042. Patent applications filed by Chinese companies have increased since around 2018, when the U.S. began to impose full-scale export controls on Chinese high-tech companies. Compared with 10 years ago, IBM's patent holdings increased by a factor of 1.5. In contrast, holdings for Huawei and Tencent were 2.3 times and 13 times higher, respectively.

Martin Goetz, who joined the computer industry in its infancy in the mid-1950s as a programmer working on Univac mainframes and who later received the first U.S. patent for software, died on Oct. 10 at his home in Brighton, Mass. He was 93. The New York Times: His daughter Karen Jacobs said the cause was leukemia. In 1968, nearly a decade after he and several other partners started the company Applied Data Research, Mr. Goetz received his patent, for data-sorting software for mainframes. It was major news in the industry: An article in Computerworld magazine bore the headline "First Patent Is Issued for Software, Full Implications Are Not Known." Until then, software had not been viewed as a patentable product, one that was bundled into hulking mainframes like those made by IBM. Ms. Jacobs said her father had patented his own software so that IBM could not copy it and put it on its machines.

"By 1968, I had been involved in arguing about the patentability of software for about three years," Mr. Goetz said in an oral history interview in 2002 for the University of Minnesota. "I knew at some point in time the patent office would recognize it." What Mr. Goetz called his "sorting system" is believed to have been the first software product to be sold commercially, and his success at securing a patent led him to become a vocal champion of patenting software. The programs that instruct computers on what to do, he said, were often as worthy of patents as the machines themselves. The issuance of Mr. Goetz's patent "helped managers, programmers and lawyers at young software firms feel as if they were forming an industry of their own -- one in which they were creating products that were potentially profitable and legally defensible as proprietary inventions," Gerardo Con Diaz, a professor of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis, wrote in the 2019 book "Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development." Further reading, from Slashdot archive: Recipient of First Software Patent Defends Them (2009).

Slashdot reader Striek remembers Silicon Valley's long history of open source develoipment — and how HashiCorp "made the controversial decision to change licenses from the Mozilla Public License to MariaDB's Business Source Licesne. The key difference between these two licenses is that the BSL limits its grant to "non-production use".

HashiCorp's CEO is now predicting there would be âoeno more open source companies in Silicon Valleyâ unless the community rethinks how it protects innovation, reports The Stack: While open source advocates had slammed [HashiCorp's] license switch, CEO Dave McJannet described the reaction from its largest customers as "Great. Because you're a critical partner to us and we need you to be a big, big company." Indeed, he claimed that "A lot of the feedback was, 'we wished you had done that sooner'" — adding that the move had been discussed with the major cloud vendors ahead of the announcement. "Every vendor over the last three or four years that has reached any modicum of scale has come to the same conclusion," said McJannet. "It's just the realisation that the open source model has to evolve, given the incentives that are now in the market."

He claimed the historic model of foundations was broken, as they were dominated by legacy vendors. Citing the case of Hadoop, he said: "They're a way for big companies to protect themselves from innovation, by making sure that if Hadoop becomes popular, IBM can take it and sell it for less because they are part of that foundation." The evolution to putting open source products on GitHub had worked "really, really well" but once a project became popular, there was an incentive for "clone vendors to start taking that stuff." He claimed that "My phone started ringing materially after we made our announcement from every open source startup in Silicon Valley going 'I think this is the right model'."

He said the Linux Foundation's adoption of Open Tofu raised serious questions. "What does it say for the future of open source, if foundations will just take it and give it a home. That is tragic for open source innovation. I will tell you, if that were to happen, there'll be no more open source companies in Silicon Valley."
Hashicorp also announced a beta using generative AI to produce new module tests, and HCP Vault Radar, which scans code for secrets, personally identifiable information, dependency vulnerabilities, and non-inclusive language.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A brain-inspired computer chip that could supercharge artificial intelligence by working faster with much less power has been developed by researchers at IBM in San Jose, California. Their massive NorthPole processor chip eliminates the need to frequently access external memory, and so performs tasks such as image recognition faster than existing architectures do -- while consuming vastly less power.

"Its energy efficiency is just mind-blowing," says Damien Querlioz, a nanoelectronics researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau. The work, published in Science, shows that computing and memory can be integrated on a large scale, he says. "I feel the paper will shake the common thinking in computer architecture." NorthPole runs neural networks: multi-layered arrays of simple computational units programmed to recognize patterns in data. A bottom layer takes in data, such as the pixels in an image; each successive layer detects patterns of increasing complexity and passes information on to the next layer. The top layer produces an output that, for example, can express how likely an image is to contain a cat, a car or other object

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears to be in a state of damage control following recent controversial comments on AI-related job losses. From a report: Speaking at an event in the US this week, Krishna said IBM has no intention of laying off tech staff, such as developers or programmers, and instead plans to ramp up hiring for roles in these areas. "I don't intend to get rid of a single one," he said. "I'll get more." Krishna added that the company aims to increase the number of software engineering and sales staff over the next four years to accommodate for its heightened focus on generative AI. Instead, the hammer will fall largely on staff working in back-office operations, aligning closely with what we've heard previously from the exec.

Earlier this year, IBM announced plans to cut nearly 8,000 staff working in positions spanning human resources in a bid to automate roles. The move means that anywhere up to 7,800 jobs at the tech giant's HR division could be cut, equivalent to around 30% of the overall workforce in the unit. IBM also said at the time that it would halt hiring for roles in the division on account of positions being automated.

Krishna has been among the most outspoken big tech executives on the topic of AI job losses in recent months. While industry figureheads have repeatedly shirked the topic, Krishna, to his credit, has been candid on the subject. In an interview with CNBC in August, Krishna suggested "we should all feel better" about the influx of generative AI tools, much to the ire of critics worried about its impact on the labor market. Krishna also told the broadcaster that organizations can deliver marked improvements to productivity through generative AI, but that will come at the expense of human roles.

Simon Sharwood writes via The Register: The Chinese manufacturer that took over IBM's PC business announced on Thursday that it's teamed with an outfit named Esper that specializes in custom cuts of Android, plus device management offerings. Android is most commonly used in handheld devices. Lenovo's taking it in an entirely different direction by making the ThinkCentre M70a: a desktop all-in-one.

The first fruit of the collaboration with Esper, the ThinkCentre M70a boasts a 21 -- inch touch screen and offers a choice of 12th-gen Intel core CPUs from the Core i3 to the almost workstation-grade Core i9, at prices from $889 to beyond $1250. What could you do with Android on a Corei9, plus the maximum 16GB DDR4 3200MHz and 512GB PCIe SSD Lenovo's machines allow? Almost anything -- but Lenovo thinks its Android effort will first be appreciated by customers in the retail, hospitality, and healthcare industries. Esper pitches its wares as ideal for point-of-sale systems, kiosks, and digital signage -- environments where users don't need to access diverse apps but do need a machine that reliably boots into custom environments.

Lenovo's not just doing desktop PCs. The number one PC maker by market share has promised it will also ship Esper's wares on the small form factor ThinkCentre M70q -- a machine designed to be bolted to the back of monitors. The ThinkEdge SE30 -- a ruggedized and fanless edge client -- will also have an Android option. So will the ThinkCentre M90n-1 IoT [PDF] -- another rugged client for edge applications.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and other technology heavyweights debated the possibilities and risks of artificial intelligence Wednesday in a closed-door meeting with more than 60 U.S. Senators who are contemplating legislation to regulate the technology. WSJ: Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X (formerly Twitter), warned about what he views as AI's potential to threaten humanity, according to a participant. Microsoft founder Gates said the technology could help address world hunger, said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who convened the session. Other speakers included Facebook founder Zuckerberg and the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and IBM, along with union leaders. Schumer at one point asked the guests if they agreed that the government needed to play a role in regulating artificial intelligence. Everyone present raised their hands, Schumer said during a break in the day-long session.

Despite that consensus -- and Schumer's vow to move toward passing legislation within months -- the meeting also laid bare some of the tension points ahead. One debate centered on the practice of making certain AI programs "open source," or available for the public to download and modify. Some in the room raised concerns about the practice, which has the potential to put powerful AI systems in the hands of bad actors, according to one participant. But Zuckerberg, whose company Meta Platforms has released powerful open source models, defended the practice. He told Senators in his opening statement that open source "democratizes access to these tools, and that helps level the playing field and foster innovation for people and businesses," according to excerpts released by the company. Another point of tension related to workers who see AI as a potential threat to their jobs. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) recounted a moment where the head of the Writers Guild of America West, Meredith Stiehm, described the views of members who are on strike seeking a new contract with Hollywood studios in part to address those fears.

Adobe, IBM, Nvidia and five other firms have signed President Joe Biden's voluntary commitments governing artificial intelligence, which requires steps such as watermarking AI-generated content, the White House said. From a report: The original commitments, which were announced in July, were aimed at ensuring that AI's considerable power was not used for destructive purposes. Google, OpenAI and OpenAI partner Microsoft signed onto the commitments in July.

Earlier this year, Singapore-based embedded security researcher yeokm1 built a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS.

Now they're back with a new project: HDMI is a relatively modern video connector we take for granted on modern PCs and monitors. Now vintage PCs can join in the fun too with a native connection to modern HDMI monitors without any additional adapter.

Two years ago, I learned of an open-source project called Graphics Gremlin by Eric Schlaepfer who runs the website Tubetime.us. It is an 8-bit ISA graphics card that supports display standards like Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) and Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA). CGA and MDA are display standards used by older IBM(-compatible) PCs in the 1980s. The frequencies and connectors used by CGA and MDA are no longer supported by modern monitors hence it is difficult for older PCs of the 1980s era to have modern displays connected to them without external adapters. Graphics Gremline addresses this problem by using techniques like scan doubling (for CGA) and increasing the vertical refresh rate (for MDA) then outputing to a relatively newer but still old VGA port.

I fabricated and assembled the design then installed it into my IBM5155... I decided to modify the Graphics Gremlin design so it can connect natively to an external HDMI monitor and service the internal Composite-based CRT at the same time.
The post concludes triumphantly with a photo of their IBM 5155 running the CGA Compatibility Tester displaying the color palette.

Slashdot reader martiniturbide writes: ArcaOS 5.1.0 is an OEM distribution of IBM's discontinued OS/2 Warp operating system. This new version of ArcaOS offers UEFI compatibility allowing it to run in modern x86 hardware and also includes the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts.

At OS2World the OS/2 community has been called upon to report supported hardware, open source any OS/2 software, make public as much OS/2 documentation as possible and post the important platform links. OS2World insists that open source has helped OS/2 in the past years and it is time to look under the hood to try to clone internal components like Control Program, Presentation Manager, SOM and Workplace Shell.

During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, IBM announced that it would no longer offer "general purpose" facial recognition technology due to concerns about racial profiling, mass surveillance, and other human rights violations. Now, according to The Verge and Liberty Investigates, "IBM signed a $69.8 million contract with the British government to develop a national biometrics platform that will offer a facial recognition function to immigration and law enforcement officials." From the report: A contract notice for the Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform outlines how the project initially involves developing a fingerprint matching capability, while later stages introduce facial recognition for immigration purposes -- described as "an enabler for strategic facial matching for law enforcement." The final stage of the project is described as delivery of a "facial matching for law enforcement use-case." The platform will allow photos of individuals to be matched against images stored on a database -- what is sometimes known as a "one-to-many" matching system. In September 2020, IBM described such "one-to-many" matching systems as "the type of facial recognition technology most likely to be used for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or other violations of human rights."

IBM spokesman Imtiaz Mufti denied that its work on the contract was in conflict with its 2020 commitments. "IBM no longer offers general-purpose facial recognition and, consistent with our 2020 commitment, does not support the use of facial recognition for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or other human rights violations," he said. "The Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform and associated Services contract is not used in mass surveillance. It supports police and immigration services in identifying suspects against a database of fingerprint and photo data. It is not capable of video ingest, which would typically be needed to support face-in-a-crowd biometric usage."

Human rights campaigners, however, said IBM's work on the project is incompatible with its 2020 commitments. Kojo Kyerewaa of Black Lives Matter UK said: "IBM has shown itself willing to step over the body and memory of George Floyd to chase a Home Office contract. This won't be forgotten." Matt Mahmoudi, PhD, tech researcher at Amnesty International, said: "The research across the globe is clear; there is no application of one-to-many facial recognition that is compatible with human rights law, and companies -- including IBM -- must therefore cease its sale, and honor their earlier statements to sunset these tools, even and especially in the context of law and immigration enforcement where the rights implications are compounding."

Replacing a sort algorithm in the FreeBSD kernel has improved its boot speed by a factor of 100 or more... and although it's aimed at a micro-VM, the gains should benefit everyone. From a report: MicroVMs are a hot area of technology R&D in the last half decade or so. The core idea is a re-invention of some of concepts and technology that IBM invented along with the hypervisor in the 1960s: designing OSes specifically to run as guests under another OS. This means building the OS specifically to run inside a VM, and to talk to resources provided by a specific hypervisor rather than to fake hardware.

This means that the guest OS needs next to no support for real hardware, just VirtIO drivers which talk directly to facilities provided by the host hypervisor. In turn, the hypervisor doesn't have to provide an emulated PCI bus, emulated power management, emulated graphics card, emulated network interface cards, and so on. The result is that the hypervisor itself can be much smaller and simpler. The result of ruthlessly chopping down both the hypervisor, and the OS that runs inside it, is that both ends can be much smaller and simpler. That means that VMs can use much fewer resources, and start up much quicker.

Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its second-gen CZ Smart watch due to a "technical issue." From a report: The Wear OS watch, which launched in May, had a feature based on tech from IBM's Watson and NASA to track a person's alertness. It appears the decision stems from negative experiences from reviewers. Michael Fisher -- better known as MrMobile on YouTube -- noted that Citizen said it would suspend sales after he had reached out to the company about the watch's many issues. That was corroborated by a Wired story, in which reviewer Julian Chokkattu also detailed several bugs, like laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time.

IBM is introducing the watsonx Code Assistant for Z, a tool that uses generative AI to translate COBOL code to Java. This tool is set to be available in Q4 2023 and aims to speed up the translation of COBOL to Java on IBM's Z mainframes. The Register reports: According to IBM, there are billions of lines of COBOL code out there as potential candidates for modernization (a report last year estimated the total figure at 775-850 billion lines). For this reason, the generative AI features in watsonx Code Assistant for Z are intended to help developers to assess and determine the code most in need of modernization, allowing them to more speedily update large applications and focus on critical tasks.

IBM wants to provide tooling for each step of the modernization process, starting with its Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI) inventory and analysis tool. Other steps include refactoring business services in COBOL, transforming the code to Java code, and then validating the resulting outcome with the aid of automated testing. The resulting Java code emitted by watsonx Code Assistant for Z will be object-oriented, but will still interoperate with the rest of the COBOL application IBM claimed, as well as with key services such as CICS, IMS, DB2, and other z/OS runtimes.

IBM will sell its weather business to Francisco Partners, which will operate it as a standalone company. From a report: IBM's consumer-facing weather services such as Weather.com and business-oriented offerings will be acquired by the technology-focused private equity firm for an undisclosed sum, it said in a joint statement with Francisco on Tuesday. IBM will retain its sustainability software suite. "Through increased investment and resources from Francisco Partners, The Weather Company will look to move beyond forecasting alone and bring new tools and experiences to users to help them understand how weather impacts all aspects of their lives, starting with health and well-being," the companies said in the statement. IBM has been considering sale of the unit since at least April. The division was acquired in a deal announced in 2015 that included the apps and websites of the Weather Channel and Weather Underground as part of an effort to extend its move into the then-hot Internet of Things market.

IBM's business research organization (the IBM Institute for Business Value), released results from a new global study. Its conclusion? "The world of work has changed compared to even six months ago." Executives surveyed estimate that 40% of their workforce will need to reskill as a result of implementing AI and automation over the next three years. That could translate to 1.4 billion of the 3.4 billion people in the global workforce, according to World Bank statistics. Respondents also report that building new skills for existing employees is a top talent issue.

Workers at all levels could feel the effects of generative AI, but entry-level employees are expected to see the biggest shift. Seventy-seven percent of executive respondents say entry-level positions are already seeing the effects of generative AI and that will intensify in the next few years. Only 22% of respondents report the same for executive or senior management roles.

AI can open up more possibilities for employees by enhancing their capabilities. In fact, 87% of executives surveyed believe employees are more likely to be augmented than replaced by generative AI. That varies across functions — 97% of executives think employees in procurement are more likely to be augmented than replaced, compared to 93% for employees in risk and compliance, 93% for finance, 77% for customer service and 73% for marketing...

With AI primed to take on more manual and repetitive tasks, employees surveyed report engaging in impactful work is the top factor they care about beyond compensation and job security — more important than flexible work arrangements, growth opportunities and equity. On top of that, nearly half of employees surveyed believe the work they do is far more important than who they work for or who they work with regularly...
ZDNet explains the report's methodology: To find answers to these questions, IBM pulled data from two prior studies, one survey of 3,000 C-level executives across 28 countries and another of 21,000 workers in 22 nations...

According to IBM IBV research, tech adopters who successfully reskill to adapt "technology-driven job changes report a revenue growth rate premium of 15% on average" and those who focus on AI "see a 36% higher revenue growth rate than their peers." "AI won't replace people — but people who use AI will replace people who don't," said IBM in the report.

The new skill paradigm shifts technical skills that were typically prioritized, such as proficiency in STEM, which was the most critical skill in 2016, to the least priority in 2023. The reason is that now tools like ChatGPT allow workers to do more with less knowledge, as noted by the report. Now there is a bigger emphasis on people skills such as team management, the ability to work effectively in team environments, the ability to communicate effectively, and the willingness to be adaptable to change, which all shifted to top the most critical skills required of the workforce in 2023.
The report ultimately suggests HR leaders redesign work and operating models "to shepherd their organizations into the future."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Millions of Americans had their sensitive medical and health information stolen after hackers exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the widely used MOVEit file transfer software raided systems operated by tech giant IBM. Colorado's Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), which is responsible for administering Colorado's Medicaid program, confirmed on Friday that it had fallen victim to the MOVEit mass-hacks, exposing the data of more than four million patients.

In a data breach notification (PDF) to those affected, Colorado's HCPF said that the data was compromised because IBM, one of the state's vendors, "uses the MOVEit application to move HCPF data files in the normal course of business." The letter states that while no HCPF or Colorado state government systems were affected by this issue, "certain HCPF files on the MOVEit application used by IBM were accessed by the unauthorized actor." These files include patients' full names, dates of birth, home addresses, Social Security numbers, Medicaid and Medicare ID numbers, income information, clinical and medical data including lab results and medication, and health insurance information. HCPF says about 4.1 million individuals are affected.

IBM has yet to publicly confirm that it was affected by the MOVEit mass-hacks, and an IBM spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by TechCrunch. The breach of IBM's MOVEit systems also impacted Missouri's Department of Social Services (DSS), though the number of affected individuals is not yet known. More than six million people live in Missouri state. In a data breach notification posted last week, Missouri's DSS said: "IBM is a vendor that provides services to DSS, the state agency that provides Medicaid services to eligible Missourians. The data vulnerability did not directly impact any DSS systems, but impacted data belonging to DSS." DSS says that the data accessed may include an individual's name, department client number, date of birth, possible benefit eligibility status or coverage, and medical claims information.

Quantum computing could turbo-charge AI into something "massively, universally transformative," argues the South China Morning Post, citing a quote from theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. "AI has the ability to learn new, complex tasks, and quantum computers can provide the computational muscle it needs..."

"AI will give us the ability to create learning machines that can begin to mimic human abilities, while quantum computers may provide the calculational power to finally create an intelligent machine." Where AI brings an ability to self-improve and learn from its mistakes, quantum computers add speed and power. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said "AI can accelerate quantum computing, and quantum computing can accelerate AI...."

Complex calculations that would take classical supercomputers thousands of years to crunch could, in theory, be completed by quantum computers in minutes... In expectation of its advantages, the automotive industry is already collaborating with pioneers in the quantum-computing arena. Daimler has partnered with IBM, Volkswagen with D-Wave Systems (a Canadian quantum-computing firm) and Hyundai with IonQ. "If you can increase the energy density of your battery by another factor of two, three or four, then instead of 300 miles (480km), you can go 600 miles and 1,200 miles on [one] charge," says Kim. "That actually starts to cross the threshold where they become so much more attractive than fossil fuel. And then we can really make an impact on global warming and all these problems..."

Similarly, the mysteries of carbon sequestration could be unravelled by quantum computing, with clear benefits for the efforts to reverse global warming. Drug design at the molecular level could be revolutionised, opening up new avenues for vaccines and, for example, personalised cancer treatment. There's no doubt about it: with effective quantum computing our understanding of chemical processes could become godlike. Finance and investment, too, could be revolutionised by the qubit. The huge range of factors that produce market fluctuations allow for an almost infinite range of possible outcomes, and modelling these possibilities would be relatively simple for quantum computers. Forecasts of market movements would become far more accurate...

For many physicists and mathematicians, every step of the journey towards functional and world-changing quantum computers assumes acknowledgement of an even more profound goal: a greater understanding of the nature of reality. This could also mean that the very nature of understanding has to be reconsidered.
The article suggests we "occupy ourselves with the dawning realisation that something philosophically far-reaching has begun to percolate into our shared consciousness from the laboratories of the world's quantum pioneers."