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I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk but google has done enormous amounts of res

I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk but google has done enormous amounts of research into non-classical computing. They've also done their AI projects to solve protein folding faster and more accurate than any contemporary solving models[1]. which is why the name sort of makes sense even though many on HN would appreciate nuance. "Nature is quantum mechanical: The bonds and interactions among atoms behave probabilistically, with richer dynamics that exhaust the simple classical computing logic." "Already we run quantum computers that can perform calculations beyond the reach of classical computers."[citation needed] [1] https://www.deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery https://www.deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for...

anon_tor_12345 5y ago
>"Already we run quantum computers that can perform calculations beyond the reach of classical computers" Yea this isn't true. Their 54 qubit machine can simulate random circuits pretty fast but 1) that's not at all useful and specifically contrived as a test of "quantum supremacy". 2) totally debatable whether it's actually out of reach: >In the paper, it is argued that their device reached “quantum supremacy” and that “a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task.” We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/on-quantum-supremacy/ https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/on-quantum-suprem...
- bawolff 5y ago
  Ibm is a competitor in this space. Although there is some debate about google's claim, ibm is a very biased source as they have financial incentives to bad talk google. As far as point 1 goes, nobody ever claimed otherwise. Its just an arbitrary milestone. Walk before you run. Quantum supremacy is a step in the journey, not the destination. You make a hello world program before making actual useful programs.
  - anon_tor_12345 5y ago
    >Ibm is a competitor in this space I'm well aware - doesn't mean they're not right. >You make a hello world program before making actual useful programs. how hilarious would it be if some chip manufacturer bragged about the performance of a hello world on their chip...?
  - klyrs 5y ago
    That IBM is a competitor increases my trust in their refutation. IBM could have raced to to the same test, but on 56 qubits or whatever, and claimed quantum supremacy themselves. I've seen a lot of criticism that DWave is only good at making hardware that's hard to simulate without doing anything useful with it. What's different here?
    - bawolff 5y ago
      My understanding was that dwave was easy to simulate (albeit using a different algo than it was allegedly using)
      - klyrs 5y ago
        Has their Feb '21 paper been refuted? They claim a scaling advantage (in addition to a large speed advantage) over path integral Monte Carlo, which appears to be best in class for simulating their hardware. Do you know of a better algorithm? Also, what do you mean by "allegedly"? Aren't the basics of their hardware pretty well-understood, or do you think they're sitting on a secret classical algorithm that's fooled external researchers (including Google) into believing that they've demonstrated multiqubit entanglement?
Zenst 5y ago
> I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk That was my first take - and akin to saying "quantum intelligence" which just reeks of marketing on a synergy overdrive mission. Of course they are just using quantum hardware/software approach towards AI type problems. So for me it may of been better to say Quantum Annealed AI. But then, as a campus name, it don't have that marketing ring going for it. One question though that will arise down the line will be ethics, with a classical computer you can drill down and understand fully every bit of decision making if needs be. With a quantum computer, not so easy at all. Maybe possible that they create a good quantum AI system but equally at the same time it is also an evil AI system, only that they observe only the good as that is what they are looking for. Philosophy is going to have a whole avenue of debate over this in years to come and who knows - AI psychology might be the future job we never expected to happen.
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  You realize quantum computing is ultimately just a few linear algebra operations right? There is no more magic in it than conventional neural network based models. Standard ML ethical frameworks are more than sufficient. Adding "quantum" simply means speed ups for a few specific types of operations. You are not going to get an AGI with the current state of the art in quantum computing.
  - inasio 5y ago
    No. See for example the Grover search algorithm. You can use to find whether an item is inside a list in O(sqrt(n)).
    - spxtr 5y ago
      I don't understand what you are saying. The parent comment said that quantum allows a few types of operations to get faster, and your response was "No," followed by a specific algorithm that is faster. Where do you disagree?
xkcd-sucks 5y ago
Nature is the way it is. Quantum mechanics is one model people use to explain/predict nature
sriku 5y ago
It is reasonable to temper one's skepticism about something like this based on whether the claiming party is willing to put their money where their mouth is. The greater likelihood is that they know something I might not (just speaking for myself as I don't know how much expertise you have in the quantum or AI fields).

anon_tor_12345 5y ago

>"Already we run quantum computers that can perform calculations beyond the reach of classical computers" Yea this isn't true. Their 54 qubit machine can simulate random circuits pretty fast but 1) that's not at all useful and specifically contrived as a test of "quantum supremacy". 2) totally debatable whether it's actually out of reach: >In the paper, it is argued that their device reached “quantum supremacy” and that “a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task.” We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/on-quantum-supremacy/ https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/on-quantum-suprem...

bawolff 5y ago
Ibm is a competitor in this space. Although there is some debate about google's claim, ibm is a very biased source as they have financial incentives to bad talk google. As far as point 1 goes, nobody ever claimed otherwise. Its just an arbitrary milestone. Walk before you run. Quantum supremacy is a step in the journey, not the destination. You make a hello world program before making actual useful programs.
- anon_tor_12345 5y ago
  >Ibm is a competitor in this space I'm well aware - doesn't mean they're not right. >You make a hello world program before making actual useful programs. how hilarious would it be if some chip manufacturer bragged about the performance of a hello world on their chip...?
- klyrs 5y ago
  That IBM is a competitor increases my trust in their refutation. IBM could have raced to to the same test, but on 56 qubits or whatever, and claimed quantum supremacy themselves. I've seen a lot of criticism that DWave is only good at making hardware that's hard to simulate without doing anything useful with it. What's different here?
  - bawolff 5y ago
    My understanding was that dwave was easy to simulate (albeit using a different algo than it was allegedly using)
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Has their Feb '21 paper been refuted? They claim a scaling advantage (in addition to a large speed advantage) over path integral Monte Carlo, which appears to be best in class for simulating their hardware. Do you know of a better algorithm? Also, what do you mean by "allegedly"? Aren't the basics of their hardware pretty well-understood, or do you think they're sitting on a secret classical algorithm that's fooled external researchers (including Google) into believing that they've demonstrated multiqubit entanglement?

Zenst 5y ago

> I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk That was my first take - and akin to saying "quantum intelligence" which just reeks of marketing on a synergy overdrive mission. Of course they are just using quantum hardware/software approach towards AI type problems. So for me it may of been better to say Quantum Annealed AI. But then, as a campus name, it don't have that marketing ring going for it. One question though that will arise down the line will be ethics, with a classical computer you can drill down and understand fully every bit of decision making if needs be. With a quantum computer, not so easy at all. Maybe possible that they create a good quantum AI system but equally at the same time it is also an evil AI system, only that they observe only the good as that is what they are looking for. Philosophy is going to have a whole avenue of debate over this in years to come and who knows - AI psychology might be the future job we never expected to happen.

ampdepolymerase 5y ago
You realize quantum computing is ultimately just a few linear algebra operations right? There is no more magic in it than conventional neural network based models. Standard ML ethical frameworks are more than sufficient. Adding "quantum" simply means speed ups for a few specific types of operations. You are not going to get an AGI with the current state of the art in quantum computing.
- inasio 5y ago
  No. See for example the Grover search algorithm. You can use to find whether an item is inside a list in O(sqrt(n)).
  - spxtr 5y ago
    I don't understand what you are saying. The parent comment said that quantum allows a few types of operations to get faster, and your response was "No," followed by a specific algorithm that is faster. Where do you disagree?

xkcd-sucks 5y ago

Nature is the way it is. Quantum mechanics is one model people use to explain/predict nature

sriku 5y ago

It is reasonable to temper one's skepticism about something like this based on whether the claiming party is willing to put their money where their mouth is. The greater likelihood is that they know something I might not (just speaking for myself as I don't know how much expertise you have in the quantum or AI fields).