The topics below were chosen by the Committee in the absence of suggestions from the members.

The meeting focus was on IBM Research's ideas of the most important technologies for the future. We considered the technologies chosen in 2018 and then some added more recently. Participants were asked to contribute their experiences and how these technologies might influence their lives in the future, if IBM is right!

If you missed the discussion, you can watch the ideas at least.

The five technologies that IBM believes will fundamentally reshape business and society in the next five years - 5 in 5: (2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs1KJTWpF1g (overall 22 minutes, item start times in brackets below)
1. (0.0) Technologies to identify counterfeit materials - eg fake goods, medicines, etc - crypto-anchors and blockchain.
2. (5.21) Catching hackers with lattice cryptography eg fixing encryption so it cannot be hacked.
3. (9.16) Deal with bias that develops in AI use.
4. (14.05) Quantum computing for everyone. (This video clip ‘Quantum Computer in a Nutshell (Documentary Oct 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dXNmbiGPS4’ attempts a layperson’s understanding)
5. (17.42) Robot microscopes to clean the ocean.

Then these 2 items from AppleInsider were considered:

- 27/1/2020 Avast antivirus harvested user data, then sold to Google, Microsoft etc;

and
- 28/1/2020 Amazon’s Ring apps (for Android) caught spying on users, sharing data with third-parties.

These topics emphasise the ever expanding security issues and intrusion into our privacy associated with the use of devices connected to the internet.