3 ms·

A good point, but quantum computation can do anything that reversible classical computation can. If you do your entire computation while keeping all the qubits

A good point, but quantum computation can do anything that reversible classical computation can. If you do your entire computation while keeping all the qubits in the {|0>, |1>} basis, then performing a CNOT onto a qubit initialized to |0> will work as a classical copy. (It will fail to truly copy the quantum state, but that's fine.) You just need a large enough supply of qubits initialized to |0> for all the copies you plan to do.

lisper 6y ago
> quantum computation can do anything that reversible classical computation can Well, yeah, but that "reversible" hedge is quite significant. Reversible means you have to retain all of your intermediate states, and it is far from clear that you could build a reversible AI that would run for more than a few milliseconds before consuming all of the available resources in its light cone. > You just need a large enough supply of qubits initialized to |0> for all the copies you plan to do. Yes, and that produces exactly the same problem: it is far from clear that there are enough qbits in the universe to build a quantum AI this way. You also have a more fundamental problem, which is that neither quantum computers nor reversible classical computers can do I/O, so how are you going to demonstrate that this thing is in fact an AI? It can't even participate in a Turing test, let alone pass one.
- c1ccccc1 6y ago
  If your goal is human level AI, there are definitely enough qubits. Humans can subsist for quite a while on just a sandwich and a large room full of air. And that is with very inefficient usage of the available negentropy. I guess one would have to demonstrate that the program implements an AI by running it on a computer with I/O, then move the same program over to an isolated quantum computer once it's passed that test. Maybe not completely philosophically satisfying, but should work in practice.

lisper 6y ago

> quantum computation can do anything that reversible classical computation can Well, yeah, but that "reversible" hedge is quite significant. Reversible means you have to retain all of your intermediate states, and it is far from clear that you could build a reversible AI that would run for more than a few milliseconds before consuming all of the available resources in its light cone. > You just need a large enough supply of qubits initialized to |0> for all the copies you plan to do. Yes, and that produces exactly the same problem: it is far from clear that there are enough qbits in the universe to build a quantum AI this way. You also have a more fundamental problem, which is that neither quantum computers nor reversible classical computers can do I/O, so how are you going to demonstrate that this thing is in fact an AI? It can't even participate in a Turing test, let alone pass one.

c1ccccc1 6y ago
If your goal is human level AI, there are definitely enough qubits. Humans can subsist for quite a while on just a sandwich and a large room full of air. And that is with very inefficient usage of the available negentropy. I guess one would have to demonstrate that the program implements an AI by running it on a computer with I/O, then move the same program over to an isolated quantum computer once it's passed that test. Maybe not completely philosophically satisfying, but should work in practice.