3 ms·
Outside of a few odd citations in the intro (which is innocuous) I don't see anything shady or dishonest in this paper after a cursory skimming. But I do worry
by aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
Outside of a few odd citations in the intro (which is innocuous) I don't see anything shady or dishonest in this paper after a cursory skimming. But I do worry about 60% of the authors being NVIDIA employees, where the corresponding author is not a staff scientist, but rather a "technical marketing engineer" whose job "focuses on inspiring developers by sharing examples of how NVIDIA quantum technologies can accelerate research."[1] So I am wondering about what articles didn't make it to this review, where ANN/GPU-accelerated QC research didn't work very well or was too expensive to justify. It makes me suspect I am being advertised to, and that this paper must be read with an unusually high degree of scrutiny.
Like I said: there's nothing obviously shady or dishonest here. But this is also an arXiv paper, so no need for authors to disclose conflicts of interest. (OpenAI has pioneered the technique of using the arXiv to distribute academic infomercials with zero scientific value.) And I worry about the distortion this stuff has on honest scientific work. Bell Labs was always an independent subsidiary: Bell's marketing staff did not take ownership of Bell Labs' research. The fact that NVIDIA's marketer has a PhD and an "engineer" title doesn't actually mitigate any of this.
[1] https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/mawolf/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/author/mawolf/
- alw4s 2y agomeanwhile the 5M prize for the first real application of quantum remains open.. quantum computing like string theory remains a scratch waiting for an itch - ie, a boondoggle. to be fair though, it is worth looking at something that has the potential to break all of the encryption on the internet.