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Google Quantum AI

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101–110 of 210 posts

Re: Google Quantum AI

#101

Hilarious. Even the connection between AI and Quantum computing is deeply opaque. When computers first began development during WW2, they were a response to immediate demands for particular functionality from many technical areas. Quantum computing seems to go the exact opposite route, first of building up an (admittedly very interesting) technology and then later figuring out if there actually is anything useful to…

idk enough physics to say quantum computing is it or not intuitively it seems like understanding matter at a sub atomic level and having a machine that can interact with it seems like a super powerful thing to have. but I think quantum computing is in the same place ML was in the 80s; influential people (mainly Marvin Minsky) said the perceptron and neural nets were a dead end same thing could be happening to quantum…

Sure on some level it is extremely interesting and I don't think there is anything wrong with doing research on it. The real issue is pretending that it is something that in the near future will change the world, while having yet to figure what you actually could do with it.

IBM and Google have invested massively because someone there thought that it actually would be useful. But that hasn't happened yet and to be honest it doesn't look like that will change any time soon.

Inregards to Neural Networks, they were pretty much a complete dead end until computing power increased enough to make them viable. In that case an external technology had to come along to make it work.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#102

Hilarious. Even the connection between AI and Quantum computing is deeply opaque. When computers first began development during WW2, they were a response to immediate demands for particular functionality from many technical areas. Quantum computing seems to go the exact opposite route, first of building up an (admittedly very interesting) technology and then later figuring out if there actually is anything useful to…

[deleted]

Re: Google Quantum AI

#103
post #55

Quantum AI running self driving cars in the blockchain cloud, social VR controlled. Experience our agile experience powered with renewable big data. Gamifying the digital transformation of tomorrow!

[deleted]

Re: Google Quantum AI

#104
post #15

The fact this prize exists is admitting that no one has figured out a use for quantum computers. I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." Whether this capability is useful is up in the air. Note that in practice, classical computers are going to be better at factoring nu…

Einstein did not have GPS in mind when he was developing his theories of relativity.

The theory of relativity does not in any way enable GPS. GPS is subject to (some) relativistic effects, but that is merely a source of bias, which could be corrected for with just an experience-based correction factor even if we did not understand relativity. If relativity did not exist as a physical concept, GPS would be easier, not harder or impossible. (I guess this misconception comes from xkcd in some form?)

A perhaps more relevant example: Einstein did not have the cell phone camera in mind when developing his theory of the photoelectric effect.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#105
post #15

The fact this prize exists is admitting that no one has figured out a use for quantum computers. I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." Whether this capability is useful is up in the air. Note that in practice, classical computers are going to be better at factoring nu…

Ther are plenty of well documented uses for quantum computers, the hardware is just too nascent to fully accommodate them. The most powerful quantum computers today still only have just over 1,000 qbits.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#106
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." And, hopefully, other quantum systems in general! I can see that helping with material science. That can have huge multiplier effects on the rest of the economy. But I agree with you, that other serious applications of quantum c…

I thought one of the main advantages of QC was that it could (theoretically) solve existing problems that have exponential time complexity with more efficiency. Isn’t the idea that it could make everything faster? Or did I fall for the marketing.

This is true in theory but don’t think it’s ever been proven in practice

Re: Google Quantum AI

#107
post #15

The fact this prize exists is admitting that no one has figured out a use for quantum computers. I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." Whether this capability is useful is up in the air. Note that in practice, classical computers are going to be better at factoring nu…

Wouldn't the D-Wave kinda-but-not-really quantum computer that came out a decade ago be ideal for AI? Annealing sounds like exactly the kind of problem that needs to be solved for ML training?

I can't find mention of it online, but back in 2013 Lockheed Martin purchased a D-Wave machine because they wanted to use it for "AI", which it turned out meant software verification (of fighter jets?) I believe by searching for the possibility of some kind of invalid program state in a large program, which IIRC they couldn't manage to solve with standard solvers. But in that case the number of qubits in a D-Wave machine appears to me far too few for that to be possible, although I don't know the task exactly.

If by "AI" you include operations research (as opposed to statistical machine learning), yes, adiabatic quantum annealing makes sense for certain optimisation problems which you can manage to naturally formulate as a QUBO problem. By 'naturally' I mean it won't blow up the number of variables/qubits, as otherwise a far simpler algorithm on classical computer would be more efficient. I know someone who published QUBO algorithms and ran them on a NASA D-Wave machine, while I myself was using a lot of annealing for optimisation, I didn't want to get involved in that field.

But if you want to do machine learning on a large amount of data using quantum annealing, no, that's terribly badly matched, because the number of physical qubits needed is proportional to the amount of data you want to feed in.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#108
post #15

The fact this prize exists is admitting that no one has figured out a use for quantum computers. I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." Whether this capability is useful is up in the air. Note that in practice, classical computers are going to be better at factoring nu…

Quantum computers SHOULD destroy regular computers at knapsack style problems and other combinatorial explosions. The problem there is that decomposing real world problems into 128bit combinatorial selection is really hard.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#109

How is this related to AI in any way? Is it just branded as AI to get some share of that sweet AI money (Probably Google only allows funding new projects if they are AI related at this point)

I asked this exact question to one of the leaders of QuantumAI, and he explained it’s a leftover name from when this started out with an idea by some researcher at Google that is no longer part of the project.

Re: Google Quantum AI

#110
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer." And, hopefully, other quantum systems in general! I can see that helping with material science. That can have huge multiplier effects on the rest of the economy. But I agree with you, that other serious applications of quantum c…

I thought one of the main advantages of QC was that it could (theoretically) solve existing problems that have exponential time complexity with more efficiency. Isn’t the idea that it could make everything faster? Or did I fall for the marketing.

It could make somethings faster, not everything, but so far the number of useful somethings that people have come up with is very small.

A quantum computer is not a general purpose computer than can be programmed in the way we're used to - it's more like an analog computer that is configured rather than programmed. It's only useful if the problem you are trying to solve can be mapped into a configuration of the computer.

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