Imagine a future in which robots screen job candidates, universities introduce artificially intelligent tutors into classrooms and news services use a combination of social media and artificial intelligence (AI) to roll out breaking news.

Well, that future is now.

Preliminary success and our fascination with computers are leading to the exploration of a myriad of applications for artificial intelligence. Such is the interest, that the French government will spend $1.85 billion over the next five years to support research in the field.

But, there are some serious limitations to AI, says Gary Smith, Pomona’s Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics and author of the upcoming book The AI Delusion. “Thus far, artificial intelligence is designed to perform narrowly defined tasks, and it does it really well,” says Smith. “But moving outside of those tasks, computers have a lot of trouble. It is particularly evident when it requires knowledge of what you’re doing.”

Smith argues that artificial intelligence still lacks integrative thinking and has trouble deciphering meaning or patterns without context. He adds that in order to improve AI, researchers are studying how to get computers to think more like human brains, including research into how children learn.

“Our fascination with computers has led us to believe that artificial intelligence can make smarter decisions than humans,” says Smith.

This is worrisome when AI may be used for algorithmic criminology, for example. Courts all over the country are using computer models to make bail, prison-sentence and parole decisions based on statistical patterns that may be merely coincidental, but cannot be evaluated because they are hidden inside black boxes.

“At this point of development of AI, we should be very skeptical of turning important decisions to computers,” says Smith.

“The danger is not that computers are smarter than us. The real danger is that we think computers are smarter than us. And that’s not the case.”

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At the dawn of the digital age, storage was measured in kilobytes. Over the years, we’ve gotten used to megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. But have you heard of petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes and yottabytes?

You will soon, says Asya Shklyar, Pomona’s first director of high performance computing. Those terms—each indicating a capacity 1,000 times larger than the one before—will become more and more common in the years ahead. And here at Pomona, that future may be nearer than we think, she says, as the College is already gearing up to provide the kind of computing speed and memory needed to support faculty research using such state-of-the-art and memory-hungry processes as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Pomona faculty are already doing research that can benefit from that kind of memory and speed, Shklyar says. “Like climate modeling—that’s one subject we’re pursuing. And the volcano in Hawaii—we have a model in geology, with the magma and the plates and how the tension works and liquid modeling—a lot of very interesting things.”

So what comes after yottabyte (which is defined as a trillion terabytes)? “That’s the last one that’s officially recognized,” Shklyar said. “There are suggestions, like ‘hellabytes,’ but we don’t know yet.”

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Two words: Killer nanobots.

Two more words: Just kidding.

Many of us got our introduction to nanomaterials through science fiction, where visions of lethal microscopic robots were once in vogue. Since then, the fictional outlook has gotten less bleak. “Now it’s gone from killer robots to the things that give superheroes and supervillains their powers,” jokes University of Washington research scientist Lewis Johnson ’07.

But if you’re waiting for killer nanobots, you’re likely to be disappointed, according to both Johnson and Pomona Professor of Physics David Tanenbaum. If you look closely, however, you’ll find that the real world of nanomaterials is already here—from the flash memory in your computer to the coating that makes your clothing shed spilled wine to the sunscreen you wear when you go to the beach.

And that’s just for starters.

As for what to expect in the future, Tanenbaum points to the fraudulent case of the startup Theranos, which claimed to use nanosensors to do a complete blood analysis from a single drop of blood. “That was a big boondoggle and an awful sham, but the reason they were able to pull it off is because that technology is coming,” he says. “The ability to use  micromachined devices and sensors to do health care will happen, and the fact that there were some charlatans out there doesn’t mean that it’s not real.”

In fact, Pomona Professor of Chemistry Mal Johal believes nanomaterials will have a major impact throughout the practice of medicine. “For example, you may see nanovehicles that can specifically target a tumor and deliver whatever agents into that tumor and destroy it in a very highly directed manner,” he suggests. “I think medicine is where we’re likely to see a lot of the big advances.”

But whatever the next big thing in nanomaterials turns out to be, Johnson believes it is likely to be the result of a convergence of research in chemistry, physics, biology and engineering. For example, he says, his own post-doctoral work was in a cross-disciplinary technique sometimes called “biological mimicry.” In this case, he was looking at the enzyme nitrogenase, which certain bacteria use to take nitrogen from the air to make ammonia. “If we want to replicate what nitrogenase can do industrially, it needs to be put in a material that could be scaled for use in large factories,” Johnson says. And since the current industrial method of producing nitrogen fertilizers requires such high temperatures that it burns up about two percent of the world’s energy supply each year, creating a thriftier process would have a huge impact worldwide.

Johnson also believes that a similar convergence of disciplines is coming on the educational front. He got his own introduction to the field as a first-year student at Pomona, in Tanenbaum’s first-year seminar class, Nanotechnology in Science and Fiction. And he recently joined his mentor Johal to co-author an expanded new edition of the chemistry textbook Understanding Nano- ma­terials, which now crosses over into related areas of biology and physics. “It’s probably the first undergraduate book written at that level, where a sophomore student can take this with just general chemistry, general biology, general physics preparation,” Johal explains.

So will nanomaterials be a hot new interdisciplinary field at the undergraduate level? “We’re starting to see universities forming programs specifically in nanomaterials, but as to whether it’s going to become a stand-alone field, that seems to be an open question,” Johnson says. “But as far as people getting degrees in nanomaterials at the undergraduate level, I think that’s something that would be plausible in the near term.”

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Artificial Intelligence? Think again.

Business proposals for technology on artificial empathy are already on the desks of venture capitalists and technology investors such as Melish “Matt” Thompson ’96 who are always looking for the next big thing to invest in.

Thompson is the senior vice president for private equity and venture capital at Skyview Capital where he has his finger on the pulse of Los Angeles investing. Currently, the focus is on FAMED, an acronym describing the areas in which L.A. investing is concentrated: fashion, autonomous technology (artificial intelligence or AI, drones, self-driving vehicles), media, e-sports/gaming (watching people play games and sports online) and dating startups.

While AI is still a hot and growing industry, Thompson says they’ve recently invested in a company developing artificial empathy technology that can help you with a problem and think about your feelings.

And you can forget about Bitcoin—that’s old news, says Thompson. “The new thing is blockchain. The underlying technology can be used to do a range of applications in healthcare and media—using blockchain as a secure database not just for currency.”

Lastly, Thompson says he’s already receiving business plans for mining asteroids—yes, you read that right: “Space exploration, asteroid mining… It might be sooner than you think.”

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The weathered sign on the old fruit stand at what remains of the last orange grove in Rialto, Calif., reads “Adams Acres” and “Since 1907.” Owner John Adams ’66, a third-generation fruit farmer with a passion for the perfect sweetness of a peach, waves his hand at a plum tree that is in full leaf but bears no fruit.

“There are so many people who come and say, ‘I can’t understand it. My apricot tree is not producing,’ or ‘My Santa Rosa plum is not producing and they were always so good.’ They wonder if there’s a disease or something,” Adams says. “I say, ‘No, it’s global warming.’”

Adams is not merely nostalgic for the days when orchards blanketed the area. He has a Ph.D. in soil science from UC Riverside and a scholarly bent. He steps into a small house built by his grandfather to email an article from the journal Agronomy citing 89 reports and studies on climate change and its potentially devastating implications for California agriculture.

Among them: Before the end of the 21st century, 90 percent of the state’s great Central Valley could be unsuitable for growing apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums and walnuts.

It is not just that the weather is getting hotter, but that it no longer gets cold enough. Adams’ focus is on chill hours, the number of seasonal winter hours below 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

“That is like a clock that tells the deciduous fruit tree it’s time to start blooming, to put out your leaves and produce fruit,” he says. “So many of the old favorites, we’re not getting enough chill hours most years to have a decent crop, or to have any crop.”

Some varieties of apricot and plum require 700 or more chill hours, though the Santa Rosa plum needs only about 300. At UC Riverside, the most recent seasonal report recorded a mere 191, and the five-year average is 217.

The average in the first decade of the century was over 300. Adams has watched the changes over more than 50 years. The prized Rio Oso Gem peach of his youth—a variety that requires 800 chill hours—is merely a memory.

“The only things that we raised in the old days that we still can are things like figs and pomegranates that need very low chill hours,” he says.

Farmers can try switching to varieties that require fewer chill hours. They can also shift operations to higher, cooler altitudes. Adams is farming about 30 leased acres in Cherry Valley, and continues to farm the remaining two acres of the 20 his grandfather planted. The family sold 10 acres in the 1970s.

“Just now sold 7½ out of 9 ½ acres for $2 million,” Adams says. “I had to sell it, because I went broke maintaining the groves.”

Next door on that plot, a new crop rises under the California sun.

“CrestWood Communities. Now Selling! Upper $300,000s.”

The development’s name is bittersweet: Adams Grove.

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When we think about the future of solar energy, we usually think about new generations of solar cells that are more efficient or more affordable or longer-lasting—or some happy combination of the three. Lots of scientists and engineers are at work on that side of the equation, including Professor of Physics David Tanenbaum, whose current research involves the development of perovskite and organic polymer-based solar cells that should be cheaper to produce than the silicon variety.

And yet, while better solar cells will help, Tanenbaum believes the next big step forward in solar energy probably won’t be on the production side at all—it will be mainly about energy storage.

“It’s really about battery technologies, capacitor technologies and other ways to deal with the fact that we’re changing our world from centralized baseline power plants to distributed intermittent energy generation, whether it’s wind or solar,” he explains. “And the storage of that energy is what’s driving utilities like Southern California Edison bonkers.”

The most important leap forward in terms of generation, he says, may already have happened. “Twenty years ago, when we talked about this, the question was, ‘Can we harvest large amounts of energy from the sun and the wind? Will it work?’ Now we’ve said, ‘Yeah, we can do this,’ but the question is, ‘Can we build a system that can deal with energy that’s produced intermittently as opposed to energy that’s produced constantly?’”

Today’s battery technologies were all designed for portable electronics and are far too small and short-lived to do the job, he says. “All batteries, no matter how well you treat them, eventually need to be replaced. For a product like your laptop computer, which you’re going to replace in five years anyway, that’s not a big deal. But for a product that’s part of your energy grid, that’s not a good situation. Our energy grid needs to be made of parts that will last at least 25 years.  Some parts of our grid are 100 years old and still work.”

Eventually, he believes, some new energy storage technology will be built from the ground up to meet that need, but it’s unlikely to look like anything you’d recognize as a battery. “It’s more likely to be heavy, solid, non-portable, thermal, chemical or mechanical energy storage, that will hold significantly larger amounts of energy than batteries designed for portable electronics.”

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The study of our changing climate has a newcomer: the social psychology of climate change. Professor of Psychology Adam Pearson is helping lead the way with the growth of a new branch he and his collaborators have coined “social climate science.”

Pearson is working with other psychologists interested in what motivates different groups to get involved with the issue of climate change and how decision-makers and influencers can engage a broader segment of the population around these issues. Pearson recently co-edited a special issue of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations that seeks to understand how group dynamics influence how people perceive and respond to climate change, including groups we may often not think about when it comes to environmental problems.

“There’s a myth of the white environmentalist,” says Pearson. “There’s a perception that Whites are most concerned about climate change, but when you look at public opinion polls, those surveys show that minority groups, specifically Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans, and lower-income Americans are as or more concerned about environmental issues than the prototypic image of an environmentalist often encountered in the media, who is White, affluent, and highly-educated. Some minority groups like Latinos and Asian Americans identify more as environmentalists than Whites.”

Pearson adds that scientists and practitioners need to better understand the consequences of these prevalent stereotypes. That understanding will help answer questions of how people in power—environmental advocates and policy-makers—can better engage minority groups who represent a fast-growing segment of the US public and are often the most negatively impacted by issues like climate change.

“All groups need a say for creating communities that are livable—whether living in coastal areas facing flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, air pollution, or soil contamination. Take the textbook examples of the Flint water crisis or Hurricane Katrina. Some segments of the public were disproportionately affected by these crises, and climate change will exacerbate these disparities.”

Pearson points to the past few decades of research on health disparities and how cross-disciplinary collaborations have helped move the needle on global issues like the HIV/AIDS epidemic that also disproportionately affect communities of color. “There are blueprints out there and a lot of that work comes from within my field, from psychology. Psychologists have contributed to reducing health disparities, and I’m optimistic that we can do the same for environmental disparities.”

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What’s a California winter with no snow-covered peaks? How will we even know it’s December?

By the end of this century, Mt. Baldy and the other mountains in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges will be snowless, says Char Miller, director and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History. For Miller, it’s not just about losing the great views but the natural water storage that keeps the valleys hydrated.

“The natural system we have is shifting,” says Miller. “Water won’t be stored in glaciers or snow banks to slowly release in the spring, which means when the rain falls, it’s going to be moving. We’re not going to be able to manage water with dams.”

Miller says there is more than one culprit. Climate change is at the top of the list, but so are slow-moving plans to capture fast-moving water (which can travel up to 60 miles an hour on its way to the Pacific) and antiquated water rights that affect how we manage water.

The worst drought in recorded California history has prompted a number of ideas to capture, preserve and distribute water, including projects like desalination plants in San Diego and a proposal for two 35-mile-long tunnels that will carry water from the Sacramento River to the San Francisco Bay area, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

“Orange County, which is way ahead of L.A. County and others, has one of the world’s largest, if not the largest, treatment plant, where they’re grabbing every drop of black water (sewage) and cleaning it up to a level that you can drink it,” says Miller. “Because no one wants to talk about toilet to tap, they’re pumping it into their aquifers and out on the other side as groundwater, which is kind of a fig leaf.”

Some solutions have been around for years, including aquifers, sponge-like areas where the water run-off is stored naturally in the ground. Miller points to Pomona College as an example, where bioswales and permeable landscaping direct water to an aquifer under campus.

“Go look at a picture of the Greek Theatre after the 1938 flood,” he says. “There are students paddling boats there. It is a sink, literally a sink. Nature did that. Reservoirs can trap water, but it also evaporates. If we’re smart, we would utilize these natural aquifers.”

In L.A. County, two miles from the College, the Chino Water Conservation District has been doing just that since the 1940s, says Miller. Initially confined by law to work within the boundaries of San Bernardino County, the district is starting to collaborate across county lines.

“I think there’s going be a shift in terms of how we think about collaboration, how we ignore existing political boundaries, because nature ignores them,” says Miller. “What we also have to do is to rethink not just water as a consumable thing, but how we want to live in a landscape that burns, that floods, and in which the sea level is rising. There are lots of things that we could do right now, and must, if we’d like future generations to look back and say, ‘You know, they actually tried. They may not have gotten it right all the time, but they tried.’”

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Will the United States meet its emissions reduction goals as outlined in the Paris Agreement? Unlikely, says recent grad Tom Erb ’18. Without a strong, federal price on carbon—a long shot under the current administration—the U.S. will surely fail.

Erb is no newcomer to the campaign for carbon pricing. At Pomona, Erb has been a tireless climate change activist, mobilizing young people around the country to act now. For the past two years, Erb has been an organizer with the Put A Price On It campaign, a collaboration with the Years of Living Dangerously television series to mobilize grassroots support for a national price on climate pollution.

“After the reversal on climate action by the U.S. government, American states and foreign countries are continuing the push for climate policies,” he says. “Right now, you have a lot of states trying to get a head start trying to pass carbon taxes: Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and jurisdiction of Washington, D.C. Those are five or six places that could pass a carbon tax in the next two years,” says Erb.

Erb predicts that in the next five to 10 years more states will adopt policies that include expanding renewable portfolio standards, investments into electric vehicles, tax credits for carbon capture technology and moratoriums on gas and oil extraction. While these policies are not as effective as carbon pricing, Erb argues, they are likely, in the short run, to gain political support.

“But to make a real impact you’re going to need a national carbon tax and we need carbon pricing around the world.”

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Someday—probably in some crowded city in a developing country—an earthquake will come along that causes a million casualties, warns seismologist and President of GeoHazards International Brian Tucker ’67.

Tucker specializes in mitigating earthquake risks, but he believes it may take just such a mega-disaster to force governments to act. “Unfortunately, major advances in earthquake preparedness come after disasters,” he says. “I think the next big advance will occur when a big disaster takes place and it grabs people’s attention and the attention of governments.”

One of those advances he would like to see is wider adoption of earthquake early warning systems (EEW) like the ones developed in Mexico during the 1990s and in Japan way back in the early 1960s. China also has such a system, as do Taiwan and Turkey.

Soon, so will the United States.

The concept of an early warning system in the U.S. has been discussed as far back as the 1860s in a letter to the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. Tucker himself wrote in the late 1980s about modeling a warning system in California after Japan’s when he served as director of California’s Geological Survey.

The biggest problem (other than financing) is that California faultlines offer a special challenge. In Japan and Mexico, earthquakes originate offshore and seismic waves have farther to travel before affecting urban centers. In California, population centers sit right on top of fault lines, giving less time for warnings.

Today, however, a U.S. version of the system is finally in the works. “Thanks to advances in telecommunication and the internet,” he says, “an early warning system should become part of Californians’ lives in the next 10 years.”

However, he doesn’t expect it to be easy. “It needs to be thoroughly tested, and people need to be trained in what a warning means and what it doesn’t mean,” says Tucker. “One danger would be having too many warnings that didn’t result in damage, because people would lose faith in the system. Another would be accurate warnings of damaging earthquakes that give too little time for people to react.”

The first stages of an early warning system in California would communicate directly to “non-humans,” according to Tucker. “The application will first be to things such as electrical power plants or subways,” he says. “It will communicate directly to trains telling them to slow down, communicate to hospitals to switch their electrical power to a backup system. It could also automatically open the doors of fire stations before strong shaking occurs. This could become automatic without going through a human, which would be a really great first step in application.”

The beauty of these initial measures is that they come at “no cost.” It doesn’t matter if it’s a false alarm, whereas the tricky thing is issuing alarms directly to humans, because they may panic, or they may get annoyed if it’s a false alarm.

Eventually, Tucker believes California’s system will get to a point where it’s sophisticated enough to communicate directly to people. Japan already has that, he says.

“The warning in Japan’s Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 was directly to people,” he says. “An amazing fact about that earthquake is that only three percent of the population that was living in the inundation zone of the tsunami was killed. Unfortunately, that amounted to 19,000 people, but, if you go to other places like Sumatra, they expect something like 50 percent of the population living in the inundation zone to die because of lack of warning and lack of preparation.”

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