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Willow, Our Quantum Chip

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Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#351

Post by marcosdumay »

notarealllama wrote: post #267
adastra22 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took this conversation to be about ECC, not RSA.

My completely unfounded tin foil hat at the moment is that ECC was pushed as a standard not because it was faster/ smaller, but the smaller bit size makes it less quantum resistant and is more prone to be broken first (if not already) via quantum supremacy.

ECC is easier to implement right. Even the older ones that are full of footguns have orders of magnitude less footguns than RSA.

So don't fear them due to unfounded theories.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#352

Post by kelnos »

webXL wrote: post #347
socks wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really. banking systems have firewalls and access controls. quantum computations would be useless.

Those don't really mean anything when an attacker can eavesdrop on customer and employee comms and possibly redirect transactions (MITM).

Banking communications and transactions will all be protected by quantum-resistant protocols and ciphers well before that will become a problem. Most of these already exist, and some of them can even be deployed.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#353

Post by dathery »

kortilla wrote: post #332
qnleigh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to distinguish between "physical qubits" and "logical qubits." This paper creates a single "first-of-a-kind" logical qubit with about 100 physical qubits (using Surface Code quantum error correction). A paper from Google in 2019 estimates needing ~20 million physical qubits ("How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits" - https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09749 ), though recent adva…

> quantum computers would be able to retroactively break any public keys that were stored Use a key exchange that offers perfect forward secrecy (e.g. diffie Hellman) and you don’t need to worry about your RSA private key eventually being discovered.

Diffie-Hellman isn't considered to be post-quantum safe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm#Feasibility...

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#354

Post by kelnos »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #144
wasabi991011 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it is "the best explanation we have". It's a nice theory, but like all theories in quantum foundations / interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is (at least currently) unfalsifiable. I didn't "assume" hype, I hypothesized it based on the evidence before me: There is nothing in Google's paper that deals with interpretations of quantum mechanics. This only appears in the blog post, with no evidence gi…

From what I understand, David Deutsch invented the idea of quantum computer as a way to test Parallel Universes. And later people went on and built the quantum computer. Are you saying that the implementation of a quantum computer does not require any kind of assumption on computations being run in parallel universes?

That's right, it doesn't. The implementation of a quantum computer does not prove or disprove the existence of parallel universes.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#355

Post by gauge_field »

rgmerk wrote: post #346
staunton wrote: post #314

This is a great technical achievement. It gives me some hope to see that the various companies are able to invest into what is still very basic science, even if it were mostly as vanity projects for advertising purposes. Quantum computing will surely have amazing applications that we cannot even conceive of right now. The earliest and maybe most useful applications might be in material science and medicine. I'm somew…

“Quantum computing will surely have amazing applications that we cannot even conceive of right now…” As best I understand, it’s not clear yet whether quantum computing will ever have any practical applications. Furthermore, there has already been a great deal of work identifying potential applications for a quantum computer, so I’d say we’ve got a fair idea of what you could do with one if it ever exists.

The first (and important enough) practical application (apart from breaking RSA) seems to be simulation of quantum systems. But, this has some problems since alot of quantum models can be simulated with Deep Learning methods (getting better) to a good approximation. Probably, some quantum systems wont be good for (classical) Deep Learning, those might be the first candidates for application of quantum computers.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#356

Post by kelnos »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #122
wasabi991011 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also really taken aback by this quote. I have no idea who put it there, but I can assure you the actual paper contains no such nonsense. I would have thought whoever writes the google tech blogs is more competent than bottom tier science journalists. But in this case I think it is more reasonable to assume malice, as the post is authored by the Google Quantum AI Lead, and makes more sense as hype-boosting buzzw…

Quantum computation done in done multiple universes is the explanation given by David Deutsch the father of Quantum Computing. He invented the idea of a quantum computer to test the idea of parallel universes. If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel universes as well just fine. Also your comment does not have any useful information. You assumed h…

> If you are okay with a single universe coming to existence out of nothing you should be able to handle parallel universes as well just fine.

I can handle it, sure, and the idea of the multiverse is attractive to me from a philosophical standpoint.

But we have no evidence that there are any other universes out there, while we do have plenty of evidence that our own exists. Just because one of something exists, it doesn't automatically follow that there are others.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#358

Post by kelnos »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #125
gaze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm upset they put this in because this is absolutely not the view of most quantum foundations researchers.

Science is not based on consensus seeking. Science is about coming up with the best explanations irrespective of whether or not a large chunk does not believe it. And best explanations are the ones that is hard to vary. Not the one that is most widely accepted or easy to accept based on the current world view.

> Science is not based on consensus seeking.

No, but as non-experts in a given field, the best information we have to go on is the consensus among scientists who are experts in the field.

Certainly this isn't a perfect metric, and consensus-smashing evidence sometimes comes to light, but unless and until that happens, we should assume that the people who study this sort of thing as their life's work are probably more correct than we are.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#359

Post by Havoc »

noident wrote: post #211
sys32768 wrote: post #52

In other words, get off the cloud so nobody has your encrypted data which they will be able to crack in a few minutes five or ten years from now?

It depends on the algorithm you use to encrypt your data. Only asymmetric cryptography is threatened. There is no realistic threat to symmetric encryption like AES. If you are encrypting your cloud data with ed25519 or RSA, then yes, a quantum computer could theoretically someday crack them.

> Only asymmetric cryptography is threatened.

aka everything we use daily

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#360

Post by kelnos »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #141
jayd16 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is exactly based on hypotheses that are verified.

And how do you verify hypothesis? What is the process to do that?

I assume this is a rhetorical question, since you are perfectly capable of doing a search for "the scientific method" on your own.

MWI has not led to any verifiably-correct predictions, has it? At least not any that other interpretations can also predict, and have other, better properties.

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