A selection of notable quotes and comments we’ve come across this month
By Marc Ambasna-Jones 08 Nov 24 Reading time: 3 mins
“Science and tech and innovation, they aren’t luxuries. They are central to how we improve, achieve growth that is faster than average and have a dramatic increase in productivity.”
“Although architects and designers would like to use lower CO2 materials, insurance companies won’t insure those new materials… There’s a lot of negativity that’s come through into the built environment, some of it completely understandable.”
“For full transparency, I am an EV (electric vehicle) nerd. So much so that I built my own. Part research project, and part passion project. Building it, and progressively upgrading it, has taught me a few things about batteries.”
“I want to start working more with the innovation sector to see how this kind of information [from the UKTIN R&D Discovery Toolkit] could be used to support new ideas. I would like to make it work for businesses at the cutting edge looking for partners and collaborators, making databases available that have value in a commercial context so people can get insights from that.”
“Quantum computing could offer more efficient algorithms for training AI models. You can also use AI to improve quantum computing, particularly in designing new quantum architectures and combining physical qubits into logical ones.”
“Our dream is to have a universal robot brain that you could download and use for your robot without any training at all. While we are just in the early stages, we are going to keep pushing hard and hope scaling leads to a breakthrough in robotic policies, like it did with large language models.”
“We are building the essential infrastructure of quantum networking, which will be as essential to quantum computing as classical networking is to today’s cloud and high-performance computing environments. We are accelerating it out of the lab and towards the data centre for real-world use.”
“‘Don’t believe all you read in the national press’ seems more relevant than ever when it comes to electric vehicles. Despite the negative headlines, the reality is that the UK is at the forefront of Europe’s shift towards electrification of its entire transport system – fuelled by our leading position in renewable energy. The latest data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reveals that by July 2024, more than 25% of new vehicle registrations were either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.”
Ali Khan, Head of EVC UK Sales & Business Development at Vestel Mobility, via email
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.
