A selection of notable quotes and comments we’ve come across this month
By Marc Ambasna Jones 01 May 26 Reading time: 4 mins
“Robotics is becoming more data-driven, and that has implications for how the field develops and for the kinds of skills future roboticists will need.”
“A robot may watch 1,000 videos of someone holding a ball and letting go of it and so it knows that 1,000 times out of 1,000 when you let go of a ball it falls. But that doesn’t mean that it understands Newton’s laws.”
“There are a number of niche areas where the UK is particularly strong. We’re quite active in autonomous vehicles at sea, for example, and we have four or five companies that are genuine world leaders. Perhaps not surprising given that we’ve got so much coast around this country.”
“In agriculture we have several major projects, one for strawberry picking and tomato picking and one with grape picking. These are very high value crops in an industry where it has been difficult to find workers.”
“We’re pushing for more ambition. There is an immense opportunity for the UK to extend AI beyond the screen into hospitals, schools, roads, you name it. So it’s a question of how we deploy it and scale it and seize the opportunity as quickly as possible.”
“It’s about benchmarking and validation. We need to understand what works for which use case.”
Elham Kashefi, chief scientist at the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), talking about how the centre is developing testbeds to run applications across different platforms and assess performance in real-world conditions.
“It’s not even clear that there will be just one winner. It may be that there are multiple platforms. You use different ones for different applications.”
“You want to get to a point where developers don’t need to think about the underlying system. They should be able to define the problem and let the software handle the rest.”
“We’re seeing a lot of investment in hybrid AI and quantum setups in HPC, and these will start delivering ROI before full quantum advantage is a reality.”
“We’re already seeing the rollout of hardware security modules that integrate Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs) and post-quantum cryptography (PQC), with examples including the Thales Luna HSM, Fortanix DSM, and Entrust systems.”
“Quantum is unlikely to drive the same kind of data centre infrastructure expansion that AI is currently causing. In the near to medium term it will be a highly specialised capability that complements classical systems rather than replacing them.”
“Quantum computers are expected to augment rather than replace classic computing. It’s likely that quantum computers will be added into existing facilities.”
Working as a technology journalist and writer since 1989, Marc has written for a wide range of titles on technology, business, education, politics and sustainability, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Register, New Statesman, Computer Weekly and many more.
