Google, in the midst of its I/O conference (see our story here), also has teamed up with NASA to form the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at the agency’s Ames Research Center.

According to a post on Google’s Research Blog, the lab will house a D-Wave Systems quantum computer. The goal is to study how quantum computing can solve some of the most challenging computer science problems, with a focus on advancing machine learning. Machine learning, as Director of Engineering Hartmut Neven writes, “is all about building better models of the world to make more accurate predictions,” but it’s hard work to build a really good model. Real-world applications that he discusses include building a more useful search engine by better understanding spoken questions and what’s on the web to provide the best answer.

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The NY Times reports today that Google acknowledged it had violated people’s privacy during its StreetView mapping project. Thirty-eight states had brought a case against Google on the grounds that the project resulted in people’s passwords and other personal information being unknowingly recorded by the search giant. Google has agreed to settle it by paying a $7 million fine as well as by becoming more aggressive in ensuring that its employees’ efforts don’t violate privacy and informing the public about how to avoid having their privacy compromised.

In its discussion of the settlement, the article brings up that the way now is paved for another privacy battle, this time over Google Glass. Concerns are that Google Glass eyewear also can be used to record photos, videos and audios of the wearer’s surroundings, without the permission of the individuals featured in those surroundings. With Google Glass, users can use their voice to input commands to take a picture or make a video, as well as to take steps less likely to compromise privacy, such as search for facts about landmarks or events.

How that privacy question plays out is yet to be seen. But concerns aren’t stoping the project – which was demonstrated at last week’s SXSW conference – from moving ahead. Google yesterday announced that the glasses will accommodate frames and lenses that match users’ eye prescriptions, for example.

Getting Google Glass to respond to voice commands and searches appears to leverage capabilities it has developed for its Voice Search App for Android, as well as its semantically-driven Knowledge Graph database of hundreds of millions of entities and billions of facts, and their relationships to each other.

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