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Wait, you forgot one interesting question. This paper claims that a Turing machine can not be a general AI, but it says nothing about other models of computatio

Wait, you forgot one interesting question. This paper claims that a Turing machine can not be a general AI, but it says nothing about other models of computation. The notion that (quantum) Turing machines are the most general/powerful model of computation is only a conjecture, although a very plausible one (usually called the (quantum) extended Church Turing thesis). But even with that in mind, this paper does not seem convincing, including for the reasons you already mentioned. Hopefully it will spark a conversation though.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
I am not an academic neurologist, but I have never read anything convincing that suggests quantum effects are critical to the behavior of human cognition. It may yet be true, but I suspect that classical physics/chemistry is probably sufficiently close to what actually happens to convincingly model human behavior.
- krastanov 7y ago
  I completely agree with you. I put quantum in parentheses because quantum behavior is important in complexity/computability, and I wanted to be complete. However, yes, there is absolutely no reason to think a human brain possesses that computational capability (and plenty of reasons to suspect it does not).
  - afureta 7y ago
    How does quantum behavior affect computability?
    - H8crilA 7y ago
      It does not. Quantum effects are a smokescreen for clinging onto the idea that "only humans can be human". BQP is quite easily contained in PSPACE, and more generally adding quantum operations does not move one beyond Turing machines (realistically - only something like a halting problem oracle does).
      - krastanov 7y ago
        I think you missed the point of my comment. BQP (i.e. "stuff that is efficiently solvable by a quantum computer") is almost certainly bigger than P (i.e. "stuff that is efficiently solvable by classical computers"). There was not even remotely anything in my argument that was claiming "only humans can be human" or "only humans can be intelligent" or anything like that (that would have been a silly claim). And nothing remotely related to claiming quantum effects have anything to do with human brains.
    - krastanov 7y ago
      It affects complexity. Sure, it is fascinating to learn there is a separation between computable and not computable tasks, but there is an important separation among the computable tasks as well. There are "practically computable" tasks (computable with a reasonable complexity) and "computable tasks that are still infeasible in the real universe" (e.g. tasks with exponential complexity). Amusingly, it seems that there are also tasks on the border between between practical and infeasible, that can be practically solved on a quantum computer, but can not be solved in a reasonable time on a classical computer (even one as big as the whole universe). P.S. There was some abuse of naming conventions and nomenclature above. P.P.S. While computability is a well proven concept, claims about complexity (i.e. practical vs infeasible "computable" tasks) are frequently only conjectures (although they have some supporting empirical observations). P.P.P.S. The proper terms to google for as a starting point would be (really, this barely scratches the surface): - complexity class P: computable tasks that can be efficiently solved by a classical computer - complexity class BQP: computable tasks that can be efficiently solved by a quantum computer (and includes tasks that are conjectured to not be efficiently solvable by a classical computer) - complexity class NP-hard: computable tasks that are conjectured to not be solvable by a classical or a quantum computer efficiently (i.e. a medium sized problem would take a computer bigger than the universe to solve)

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

I am not an academic neurologist, but I have never read anything convincing that suggests quantum effects are critical to the behavior of human cognition. It may yet be true, but I suspect that classical physics/chemistry is probably sufficiently close to what actually happens to convincingly model human behavior.

krastanov 7y ago
I completely agree with you. I put quantum in parentheses because quantum behavior is important in complexity/computability, and I wanted to be complete. However, yes, there is absolutely no reason to think a human brain possesses that computational capability (and plenty of reasons to suspect it does not).
- afureta 7y ago
  How does quantum behavior affect computability?
  - H8crilA 7y ago
    It does not. Quantum effects are a smokescreen for clinging onto the idea that "only humans can be human". BQP is quite easily contained in PSPACE, and more generally adding quantum operations does not move one beyond Turing machines (realistically - only something like a halting problem oracle does).
    - krastanov 7y ago
      I think you missed the point of my comment. BQP (i.e. "stuff that is efficiently solvable by a quantum computer") is almost certainly bigger than P (i.e. "stuff that is efficiently solvable by classical computers"). There was not even remotely anything in my argument that was claiming "only humans can be human" or "only humans can be intelligent" or anything like that (that would have been a silly claim). And nothing remotely related to claiming quantum effects have anything to do with human brains.
  - krastanov 7y ago
    It affects complexity. Sure, it is fascinating to learn there is a separation between computable and not computable tasks, but there is an important separation among the computable tasks as well. There are "practically computable" tasks (computable with a reasonable complexity) and "computable tasks that are still infeasible in the real universe" (e.g. tasks with exponential complexity). Amusingly, it seems that there are also tasks on the border between between practical and infeasible, that can be practically solved on a quantum computer, but can not be solved in a reasonable time on a classical computer (even one as big as the whole universe). P.S. There was some abuse of naming conventions and nomenclature above. P.P.S. While computability is a well proven concept, claims about complexity (i.e. practical vs infeasible "computable" tasks) are frequently only conjectures (although they have some supporting empirical observations). P.P.P.S. The proper terms to google for as a starting point would be (really, this barely scratches the surface): - complexity class P: computable tasks that can be efficiently solved by a classical computer - complexity class BQP: computable tasks that can be efficiently solved by a quantum computer (and includes tasks that are conjectured to not be efficiently solvable by a classical computer) - complexity class NP-hard: computable tasks that are conjectured to not be solvable by a classical or a quantum computer efficiently (i.e. a medium sized problem would take a computer bigger than the universe to solve)