3 ms·

Let it be known: this is what moving the goalposts sounds like! The AI is proposing novel quantum algorithms using terminology most of us here don’t understand

Let it be known: this is what moving the goalposts sounds like! The AI is proposing novel quantum algorithms using terminology most of us here don’t understand, and it’s apparently not “that impressive”! We truly live in interesting times

mewpmewp2 3y ago
True, with AI it feels like some people are overprotective of their egos, having to downplay the amazing achievements we have seen since end of 2022. Maybe they are subconsiously so afraid of actual AGI coming, that they do have to ignore the achievements as of now.
skybrian 3y ago
If you were previously talking with someone who thought that AI's can't be creative and now they say it doesn't matter, then some goalposts moved. More likely, though, you're just reading commentary by someone else who has different goalposts in mind. Unlike football, there is no standard for goalposts in AI.
nicklecompte 3y ago
The reason it's not that impressive is a lot of us are not as easily fooled as we might have been back in 2022! As someone who also went to UWaterloo for quantum computing (MMath, not PhD, and I don't work in the field), let's look at the tweet in detail: - in the first image, Claude's output is almost all useless LLM mush! Points #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7 are uselessly vague and at best tangentially related to the problem. Only #2 has anything of interest, and even then it's just "come up with a quantum version of a classical algorithm," which is hardly insightful. Claude's output here just straight-up sucks! - in the second image, "Initialization" is useless, "Quantum State Measurement" is useless, "Momentum Refreshment" is useless (and might be wrong in this context), "Iterations" is useless and misleading, and "Sample Collection" is useless. - There is some real meat in the "Quantum Leapfrog Integration" section, but the entire last bullet point (starting with "The quantum leapfrog integrator consists of") is a completely useless statement which applies to every quantum algorithm. There is almost nothing actionable for a quantum computing researcher here, except maybe as a brainstorming aid. And of course the giant pile of LLM mush is evidence that Claude doesn’t know what a “quantum computer” is or what an “algorithm” is, it’s just a fancy chatbot. I am not at all impressed by any of this.
jprete 3y ago
If you ask for a thousand novel theories, and all the answers look good but only five can possibly work, you haven't done much better than talking to physics cranks.

mewpmewp2 3y ago

True, with AI it feels like some people are overprotective of their egos, having to downplay the amazing achievements we have seen since end of 2022. Maybe they are subconsiously so afraid of actual AGI coming, that they do have to ignore the achievements as of now.

skybrian 3y ago

If you were previously talking with someone who thought that AI's can't be creative and now they say it doesn't matter, then some goalposts moved. More likely, though, you're just reading commentary by someone else who has different goalposts in mind. Unlike football, there is no standard for goalposts in AI.

nicklecompte 3y ago

The reason it's not that impressive is a lot of us are not as easily fooled as we might have been back in 2022! As someone who also went to UWaterloo for quantum computing (MMath, not PhD, and I don't work in the field), let's look at the tweet in detail: - in the first image, Claude's output is almost all useless LLM mush! Points #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7 are uselessly vague and at best tangentially related to the problem. Only #2 has anything of interest, and even then it's just "come up with a quantum version of a classical algorithm," which is hardly insightful. Claude's output here just straight-up sucks! - in the second image, "Initialization" is useless, "Quantum State Measurement" is useless, "Momentum Refreshment" is useless (and might be wrong in this context), "Iterations" is useless and misleading, and "Sample Collection" is useless. - There is some real meat in the "Quantum Leapfrog Integration" section, but the entire last bullet point (starting with "The quantum leapfrog integrator consists of") is a completely useless statement which applies to every quantum algorithm. There is almost nothing actionable for a quantum computing researcher here, except maybe as a brainstorming aid. And of course the giant pile of LLM mush is evidence that Claude doesn’t know what a “quantum computer” is or what an “algorithm” is, it’s just a fancy chatbot. I am not at all impressed by any of this.

jprete 3y ago

If you ask for a thousand novel theories, and all the answers look good but only five can possibly work, you haven't done much better than talking to physics cranks.