Solar power has a bright future - provided sensible government policy is applied

This morning in the Oil Drum there is an excellent article on pricing of solar power.

Takeaway messages from this article are:

• Solar power prices are now in many markets lower than what consumers pay for electricity on the grid. This is due to dramatically reduced prices of panels and inverters due to economies of scale and technological improvement. This trend will continue; just as computer prices trend down as technology improves, the same thing will happen for solar photovoltaics.

• Due to the above it now pays to install and generate your own power at sunny southern latitudes and the positive-payoff geographical regions will steadily expand (latitude is the biggest factor, but cloud cover is also an issue). Hence more and more people will install such systems, including both private consumers and companies. In the long run this bodes very well for lowering fossil fuel consumption and reducing future climate change.

• The market for producing solar equipment has shifted to low production-cost markets, as happened with other technology products. That is harmful to the production industry in developed countries, but on the other hand the installation industries should continue to experience growth and profits due to demand for installation, and energy-intensive industries will benefit from cheaper power. Ultimately there should be tremendous net gains to economies that encourage installation.

• Governments have been fouling up marketing by suddenly chopping feed-in tariffs. These are fixed rates paid for electricity produced on your rooftop. The problem was that these were set at extremely high levels, and then governments realized that with the dramatically lower costs of solar production, the tariffs were way too high. However, rather than cutting them entirely, they need to be brought down to sensible levels, so it is still possible to sell to the grid. Society will benefit tremendously from having a solar generator on most roofs. But since the sun only shines some of the time, and on sunny summer afternoons such installations make much more electricity than needed in the underlying building, it is necessary to sell excess power to the grid. Without this ability the impetus to install is significantly reduced. Rates should be set at an economically justifiable level that changes over time and that is sufficient to ensure people will install systems, but also ensures no windfall profits.

• Governments also need to set up the right environment for investment in transmission and storage of solar-generated power.

• Even going off-grid entirely (which requires setting up your own storage system) is beginning to become an attractive option, and will become more attractive over time for all consumers. 

• The market for electric cars will be boosted in tandem with in increasing installation of solar photovoltaics, since recharging your own vehicles will result in big cost savings, and also your vehicle, when not in use, serves as a storage.

• Systems installed today can be expected to last 10-20 years with significant maintenance (inverter replacement) at about 10 years. However as with all technology, reliability is likely to improve, so even longer time horizons may be possible, and systems installed today may last longer than expected.

The article has a lot of very interesting equations that can be used by businesses, consumers and economists to properly work out the business case for solar power.

Greenland record temperatures: How clue are we to the tipping point?

One of the few blogs I read consistently is Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog. His focus is on hurricanes, but he also reports the latest in climatological and meteorological news. Yesterday, his key news was that record May temperatures have been experienced in Greenland.

Why is this so important? Because the future of civilization as we know it is potentially tied up in the Greenland ice sheet. People talking about climate change tend to focus on warmer summers, more droughts, extreme hurricanes etc. These are bad enough. However if Greenland melting accelerates, several drastic consequences could come to pass:

• Sea level rises on the order of tens of meters, destroying the cities and agricultural lands of billions of people
• Drastic shifts in climate, potentially freezing Europe by shutting down the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Two very interesting articles show that the Greenland situation is highly complex. There are huge volumes of information to absorb from the articles, but I would like to draw attention to two quotes:

In Gravity and Sea Level published by the European Space Agency in 2002:

To oversimplify somewhat, Greenland is unstable to increases in temperature, because it exists purely through its altitude maintaining low temperatures. If the Greenland Ice Sheet were somehow removed, it would not return.

Realistically, they mean it would not return until another ice age.

In Constructing Sea-Level Scenarios for Impact and Adaptation Assessment of Coastal Areas: A Guidance Document published by the IPCC in 2011:

The net effect of these processes [melting ice removing gravitational attraction from surrounding seawater] is that sea-level rise occurs faster in areas further away from the source of the melting. For example, in the case of melting Greenland ice, there would be less sea- level rise than the global average in the North Atlantic, near to Greenland.

So if Greenland melts, who would be inundated the worst? This is complex and research is still ongoing: Density differences due to salinity and differing expansion of cold and warm water will be one influence; patterns of circulation (subject to rapid change) will have an effect, gravity mentioned above will have an effect and so will subsidence and rising of certain land areas due to geological action and rebound from the last ice age. It would seem, however, that areas of southern Asia with vast populations near sea level are going to be hit the worst. 

How far off is this? Again there I have read many estimates. A meter or two in the next century would be possible, and tens of meters in this millennium quite conceivable. But even if it takes two centuries to get to a meter that is still utterly unacceptable.

One thing is clear: Uncertainty will continue for multiple reasons: We don't know when the 'tipping points' will occur (e.g. shutdown of ocean circulation, feedback leading to accelerating melting), we can't run a controlled experiment, we can never get all the data we might like, and we can't know what socio-economic or technological impacts occur (e.g. reductions in fossil fuel use due to economic depression, technological advances etc., or the inverse). Conservative politicians and climate deniers feed on uncertainty, claiming the science is not settled. But what is not settled is the timing, not the certainty of drastic change if we don't take drastic action.

It is hard for politicians to think even ten years in the future. But we really must think hundreds and thousands of years into the future because we hope to have descendants around then. The further we get into the future, the more absolutely certain we are of devastation if we continue policies that will lead to climate change. 

Helium: Of incredible value for the future, yet in short supply - Don't use for party balloons

One thing the public seems completely oblivious of is the situation regarding helium. Currently, we are experiencing a supply shortage, and although suppliers may be able to increase output somewhat, it is a rapidly depleting resource. Supplies will ratchet down rapidly over time.

Certainly, I suggest that everybody seriously consider not wasting helium on party balloons. As a matter of principle, my family have strictly avoided using helium in such a wasteful manner.

At one time Helium was produced as a byproduct of the nuclear weapons industry. Today it comes from certain natural gas deposits. However, they are projected to run dry in the coming decades.

We have all heard of shortages of resources that will in time cause problems for our civilization. Oil and other fossil fuels are one problem; we all hope renewable energy will replace them by the time they run out (i.e. the remaining supplies become excessively expensive).  Metals are another problem: Mines are running out. We all hope that recycling and advanced materials will solve that problem.

The trouble with helium though is that it is small and light. It leaks out of all but the most elaborate, and hence expensive, containers. And when it leaks, it goes up, to the top of the atmosphere, where recovery would seem essentially impossible. It can't be collected in recycling depots like junk metal or electronics, and can't be manufactured (since it is an element) other than through nuclear reactions. We have a small supply so it is absolutely critical not to squander it.

I was aware of the shortage from reading articles over the past decade, however it really hit home this past summer when we received a bulletin at the university telling us that our contractual supply of helium for scientific work likely could not be met.

Helium is needed in various industries. It used in extreme cooling, and hence in modern medical devices like MRI machines. It is hard to cool things as low as helium can. It is used in radiation detection, hence is important for nuclear security. It is also used in other areas of medicine. And in the future it may extremely valuable as a fusion fuel. Our decedents will curse us if we have wasted it all. We should be thinking in terms of the supply needed for centuries or millennia. The current shortage is nothing compared to what is to come.

Here is a very interesting article at Wired on the Helium shortage. It points out that there is likely a plentiful supply on the moon.  However, sending spacecraft to retrieve it will be staggeringly expensive.

My predictions for future smartphone technology

We've seen an incredible rise in smartphone technology in the last few years.

The most impressive advances in my opinion have been:

• The precision of the touch screens. We have had touch screens on phones for many years. I used to use my Palm with my finger when I couldn't be bothered to get out the stylus. The difference in the last few years has been the ability to track finger movement with high precision and in real time.
• The software. With my Palm of five years ago, there were some things I could do that I still can't do on my iPhone, but the overall experience of the latest generation of mobile OS's has been extraordinary
• The integrated hardware: Bringing together a GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, two cameras, digital signal processing, wifi with the ability to serve as a base station, bluetooth, high resolution screen and high speed CPU have provided incredible synergies and opportunities for software writers.

Lots of pundits are discussing what the iPhone 5 will bring to the iOS platform. However I am interested in predicting what will be integrated into mobile phones in five or ten years from now. Below are some of my predictions. Note that I am not mentioning very near-term capabilities like near-field communication (e.g. for payments) that we pretty-much know are coming.

1. Chemical sensors: There has been a lot of recent development towards small devices that can detect minute amounts of chemicals in the air. Devices that plug into the iPhone are already available (or see here and here).  My guess is that we will see these integrated into all high-end smartphones in 10 years, if not 5. Furthermore, I predict that they will have capabilities as good as a dog's before too long. Imagine the possibilities;

• Smelling to detect dangerous chemicals in the environment and warning you and others.
• Instant personal breathalyzer: Probably a few lives saved.
• Diagnosis of diseases. Medical practitioners will be able to make hugely beneficial use of this, but so will ordinary people. Your phone could alert you about what kind of sickness you have, by analyzing your breath. Or it could warn you to stay away from others who might be contagious.
• Telling you if food is bad
• Recognizing flowers, perfumes and even people and animals by smell.
• Telling you the humidity level

My feeling about the probability of iOS phones having such capabilities in 10 years? 60%

2. Pressure sensor / altimeter. These have been available on discrete GPS units for some years. Inevitably they will find their way into iOS and Android phones. They will be useful for navigation (GPS signals are much less accurate in the vertical dimension) but also warning of weather changes.

10 year-probability? 90%

3. Laser: This can be used as a pointing device, but it could have many more useful applications. It can be used to accurately measure distances (such devices are already carried around by real-estate agents to measure rooms). And as this article shows, it can also be used to add to the power of the chemical sensor I discussed above. It could also be used to aid in image stabilization in the camera.
10 year-probability? 75%

4. Broadcast Radio Reception, both FM and digital. It is a waste of bandwidth to send duplicate streams to everyone who wants to watch live events when there are broadcast signals available.  Some iPods already have FM radio; I would love this capability since I always feel a little guilty listening to CBC radio over the Internet (in terms of bandwidth) when there is a perfectly good over-the-air signal. In countries where there is a transition to digital radio, such as the UK, I think the devices will be able to receive such signals too, and perhaps even digital shortwave.
10 year-probability? 100%

5. Broadcast TV Reception: This naturally follows from the last point. This might be the saviour of broadcast TV. Once the tuner is in the phone, it can become a PVR as well. I think mobile TV will first appear on devices, but I also think they will be able to receive regular broadcast TV.
10 year-probability? 99%

6. Highly accurate voice-to-text and voice recognition. Voice-to-text on the iPhone is dreadful. My phone often tries to dial the wrong number. However inevitably this will improve, I think the ability for the phone to detect who is speaking (on the phone and its user) will also be integral, This gives rise to lots of security benefits: You could tell the phone to not respond or to send some form of alarm when an unrecognized user tries to use it.
10 year-accuracy? 98% correct text-to-speech.


7. Integration with cordless phones in the home. When I walk into my house, my phone should be able to connect to my landline as a cordless phone. Although many people are getting rid of landlines, they are still very beneficial from the perspective of avoiding the need for ever larger numbers of cell towers. They also provide a natural in-home conferencing ability. I think a future generation of DECT will be found on mobile phones, and when you buy a base station, you will either buy a few smartphones along with it as your remotes, or else just not bother and use your existing smartphones.

10 year-probability? 90%

8. A camera as good as any of today's mid-range SLRs: The advantages SLRs will retain are interchangeable lenses, a viewfinder, a large lens for low-light applications, and discrete controls facilitating ease of use. However, for pure available-anywhere picture-taking, phones will start to be used by professional photographers. Point-and-shoot cameras will disappear from the market.

10 year-probability? 95%

9. Integrated forbidden-action controls: A standard will be created whereby a business that wants to ban photography or an entertainment venue that wants to ban all kinds of recording as well as accidental sounds, will be able to set up a transmitter that will broadcast its requirements within the premises. Mobile devices will be programmed to obey these directives; it will be possible to scan devices upon entry to confirm to the proprietors that a device is compliant. Although there will always be people who oppose this, it will actually be good for most of us: I don't want a requirement to leave my phone at the front desk of a company, just because it has a camera. Hackers will take joy in overriding these controls, but for most people, they will make life simpler.

10 year-probability? 80%

10. Microscope / telescope: The continued ability to jam more pixels into camera sensors will lead to the ability to digitally zoom to ever greater levels. Combined with well-designed macro lenses, this could enable phones to serve both as microscopes (perhaps to 10x) and telescopes.

10 year-probability? 98%

11. Real-time facial recognition: We are seeing facial recognition rapidly invading out lives. Phones surely will be able to do it. If you forget who someone is, you could discretely point your phone at them (if you can figure out a way to do this discretely). I will have more posts about facial recognition in the near future.

10 year-probability? 99%

12. Integrated special-purpose chips specifically to boost artificial intelligence capabilities: These might be neural net chips or something similar. We have special-purpose graphics chips already, so I don't think this is too far-fetched. They could be used to boost voice-to-text, facial recognition, simultaneous translation, and many other things. I am going out on a limb on this one. Perhaps it won't be 10 years. We shall see.

10 year-probability? 50%

Check back at my blog as the years roll by to see  which of these are coming true.

Final Jeopardy: Our computer overlords are here

This is the my final of three posts on the historic match of computer vs. human in the game of Jeopardy. The first two posts are here and here. I will also speculate below on when and how computing power of Watson's caliber, and beyond, will find its way into our daily lives.

So  Watson won the IBM Challenge. A lot of us expected it, especially after Watson started dominating in the previous round. It was great to see Ken Jennings surge midway through the final round; I am a little disappointed, however, that he didn't make a larger wager on Final Jeopardy. He wouldn't have won, but it would have been closer.

Watson had quite a few wrong responses today, most particularly in a category in which the answers were all supposed to be the names of keys on a computer keyboard. There are two things interesting about this; the first is that Watson didn't understand the category to start with (and knew it). The second was that Watson didn't learn after noticing the correct 'questions' to the first couple of 'answers'. Machine learning is actually quite an advanced aspect of AI, and I am sure that a little bit more learning mixed in to Watson's many algorithms might have made a difference.  As with the interesting types of mistakes made in the previous days, I am sure the engineers would try to fix this, if there was to be another series in a few months time.

I wonder if there will ever be any more Jeopardy games pitting humans against powerful computers? Now a computer has won, it won't be so much of a sensation. However, it might be nice to have computer vs. computer matches every now and then. The computer's goofs and quirks (such as betting odd amounts) are still pretty interesting to watch, so I am sure there would be an audience for this.

There should be a competition to come up with ever more tricky games that humans can figure out but computers still have trouble with.

Within a couple of decades, I expect we will see computers of Watson's capabilities on everybody's desktop, and a few years beyond that, in everybody's phone. At that point in time, you will be able to buy Jeopardy software to play against, and you will be able to handicap it to match your skill level. Incidentally, I don't think this will all come about simply by computers getting faster and faster. There will be considerable speed increase, but most of the gains will come from a combination of increases in the amount of memory available, massive parallelism, architectural innovation and algorithm innovation. Perhaps even quantum computing may be part of it, and certainly spintronics optical connects and other yet-to-be-invented concepts will likely be part of the mix. I think hardware elements that emulate neurons might well be involved, and this will open up a whole new area for software. Certainly we will move from electronics on 2-D chips to fully 3-D structures; a lot of work will have to go into using energy super-efficiently so these do not overheat.

With Watson on the desktop, the supercomputers of the coming age will likely be mind-blowing in their capabilities. Hopefully they will routinely be put to uses that will have major benefits for society: Quickly inventing and testing new drugs in a fully simulated environment; ever more accurate forecasting of weather and climate change; optimizing traffic flows through cities, and maybe even helping humans negotiate lasting solutions to social problems and conflict situations.

For all of this to come about, we need a continual supply of bright students entering the fields of computer science, software engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering. There is a shortage of such people now in the Western World, even though the opportunities in the years to come are immense.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering, the subtitle of this post is a  quote from contestant Ken Jennings that he wrote as a humorous addendum to his Final Jeopardy answer. I actually think that there is a 70-80% chance that we won't ever have actual computer overlords. I am optimistic that we will be able to evolve technology in such a manner that we remain the masters of the computers, even though the latter may approach sentience. That said, we must heed the warnings in many science fiction stories, and realize that powerful computers pose a huge risk, just like many other technologies humans have developed.

The state of artificial intelligence: Where Watson falls down on Jeopardy

The Jeopardy games this week pitting top Jeopardy competitors against IBM's Watson supercomputer are fascinating. They offer glimpses into how well the field of artificial intelligence is developing. Here is my analysis, after day one.

Watson combines many technologies. Firstly it has to process natural language. It has to do this twice, once when 'reading' vast volumes of information (at this stage it can take it's time) and again when it has to process a Jeopardy 'answer' in order to respond with the correct question. The subtle nuances of language, such as puns, ambigiuties and shades of meaning pose huge challenges both for Watson and the human competitors. I think the engineers building Watson have done a terrific job in this area; Watson didn't seem to stumble too much in this task.

Secondly, Watson has to take the 'surface meaning' it obtains from processing language and build sophisticated knowledge representations in its memory. Watson excels at extracting and representing straightforward facts. But it seems to have trouble dealing what I call 'meta-knowledge' (or knowledge about knowledge) and the deep meaning the plots of stories. In one question it showed that it did not understand who the antagonist was in certain conflicts in the Harry Potter series, not correctly identifying Voldemort. I think this represents the state of the art in Artificial Intelligence (AI): We will not have a truly sentient machine until all the subtle interactions in both real-world and fictional event sequences can be deeply modelled by the machine, with correct analysis of such elements as motivation, causality and subterfuge.

Thirdly, Watson applies many different algorithms to reason with various hypotheses about possible correct responses. Again the Engineers have done a superb job here.

A lot has been made of Watson's accidental repetition of a wrong response 'the nineteen-twenties', that a human competitor had just got wrong. I think it is an unfortunate oversight that a speech-recognition feature was not added to Watson to deal with just this situation. However I believe that improving Watson so that it can correctly listen to what other competitors are saying would not be very difficult. The error Watson made, I believe relates to a combination of slightly faulty knowledge representation (issue two above) and reasoning algorithms (issue three above).

Watson is not 'strong AI' in that it doesn't reason with full mathematical rigour. It uses a lot of probabilistic matching technology. Some people have criticised this, claiming that it therefore isn't AI. However I disagree. Frankly I think that we humans mostly use this 'scruffy' kind of AI in our reasoning too.

Where do I think AI is going? I think that we are finally seeing the dawn of truly useful AI. We are starting to be able to use it to do sophisticated analysis.  I think sentient machines are still some decades away, but will appear in the lifetime of people alive today. That said, forecasters of the future of AI have consistently been wrong.

There have been many blog posts and articles about how Watson works and is doing.  I recommend this post by John Rennie. A sample of the show is online at YouTube.

And by the way, a plug for the University of Ottawa, my employer: Alex Trebek, Jeopardy host, is an alumnus of our University, so these episodes have special significance for the Computer Scientists and Software Engineers here.