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Launching the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab (2013)
- qntmfred 13y agoPosted 16th May 2013
- dnautics 13y agoat first I read this and immediately thought that google had jumped the shark, but then when I realized that they are proposing to use quantum computing to make ANNs tunnel through local minima in converging on solutions, I think that's a really interesting use case - if quantum adiabatic annealing can be easily programmed to do this, (whether or not it has any sort of biomimetic relevance).
- Aqueous 13y agoThe problem with quantum computers is that you never know whether they are one or not.
- tedsanders 13y agoThe consensus seems to ever tipping against the idea that D-wave is a true quantum computer. I wonder if Google and others regret spending $10mil on the machine.
- qntmfred 13y agoreally? if anything since I first heard about D-wave everything i have heard is in support of their claims. especially the last year or two
- justinpombrio 13y agoThey've had a pretty good PR engine :-)
- ivan_ah 13y agoRecently in HN: """Comparing the performance of the device on random spin glass instances with limited precision to simulated classical and quantum annealers, we find no evidence of quantum speedup""" http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1643 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1643
- fiatmoney 13y agoIt's irrelevant if it's "true quantum"; as long as it can solve optimization problems quicker or cheaper than alternatives, it could be powered by pigeons for all they care.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoAnyone here able to recommend a primer on quantum computing? I have a high-level understanding of the physics involved, but I get lost as soon as people start discussing the algorithms.
- hdivider 13y agoDrop me an email and I can send you 20+ short PDFs worth of lecture notes from a quantum information course I took at Imperial College, if you wish. They're probably as good a 'primer' as any, since they basically go from undergraduate quantum mechanics to quantum computing (& other topics). Should certainly make some of the basic quantum algorithms clear (e.g. Grover's). Failing that, I think Nielsen & Chuang's textbook is really good: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computation-Information-Anniversary-Edition/dp/1107002176/ http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computation-Information-Annive... It's thorough, naturally, but it does zoom out from time to time.
- mindcrime 13y agoDrop me an email and I can send you 20+ short PDFs worth of lecture notes from a quantum information course I took at Imperial College, if you wish. Any chance you'd be willing to just put that stuff "out there" somewhere, link to them all in a blog post, and submit that here? I'm guessing there would be more than a few people who would find that interesting...
- hdivider 13y agoI'd love to. I'm just not quite sure where lecture notes stand, legally speaking. If I send the files to just a few people I theoretically know, I guess it's like lending a book to a friend. But putting them all up for public download feels like quite a different matter. Thoughts?
- mindcrime 13y agoI'm not really sure. I've always tended to assume that if you wrote notes, paraphrasing content that you sat through a lecture on, then you own the copyright on those notes. But I do think I recall at least one case where a professor or a university tried to stop a student from distributing notes, but I don't remember the details... Here's a couple of articles on the topic: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/prof-sues-note/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/prof-sues-note/ http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/02/do-students-have-copyright-to-their-own-notes/ http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/02/do-students-have-cop... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/04/aclass-of-copyright-thieves-a-lawsuit-over-lecture-notes/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/04/aclass-of-copyrig... Unfortunately, IANAL.
- sidcool 13y agoI recollect this being posted earlier.
- Houshalter 13y agoSo how worried should I be about this? Are quantum computers really powerful enough to give us strong AI anytime soon?
- interesting_guy 13y agoso, what are the things that a d-wave system cannot do that a 'pure' quantum computer can?
- wlievens 13y agoSolving certain problems faster than a classical computer.
- munsteriron 13y agoA good book on the topic for non physicist is schrodinger's killer app published last year. I found entertaining and informative. D-wave computers are adiabetic not gate based and are generally thought not to have significant numbers of entangled particles, this does not allow for exponential speed up that is required for Shor's but should allow for quadratic speed up.
- DonGateley 13y agoI think they ought to host a seminar with Hameroff and Penrose like really soon.
- carlob 13y agoI haven't looked into this for a while, wasn't this quantum consciousness stuff widely considered a crackpot phase from an otherwise brilliant scientist (Penrose)?
- newsit 13y agoApparently it WAS until 5 days ago: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.ht...
- SF_Startup 13y agoIt may be worth noting the theory behind such devices is enough... bit.ly/1moIHDQ
- z3phyr 13y agoA little bit off-topic: Aren't quantum computers similar to the 'proposed' PCMOS analog computers based on memristors and spin torque oscillators? The programming model looks the same, and the machine code is 'complex', so it needs to be abstracted just like in proposed probabilistic computers like DARPA UPSIDE and Synapse?