371–380 of 557 posts
If we are in a simulation. This seems like a good path to getting our process terminated for consuming too much compute.
I've followed Many worlds & Simulation theory a bit too far and I ended up back where I started.
I feel like the most likely scenario is we are in a AI (kinder)garden being grown for future purposes.
So God is real, heaven is real, and your intentions matter.
Obviously I have no proof...
> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch. Processing in multiverse. Would that mean we are inyecting entropy into those other verses? Could we calculate how many are there from the time it takes to do a given calculation? We need to cool the quantum chip in our universe, ho…
What if we are? And by injecting entropy into it, we are actually hurrying (in small insignificant ways) the heat death of those universes? What if we keep going and scale out and in the future it causes a meaningful impact to that universe in a way that it's residents would be extremely unhappy with, and would want to take revenge? What if it's already happening to our universe? And that is what black holes are? Or…
I found it an interesting read and hadn't heard the term before, but it's exactly the kind of nerdy serendipity I come to this site for!
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Edit after skimming arxiv preprint[1]: Yeah, this is pretty huge. They achieved the result with surface codes, which are general ECCs. The repetition code was used to further probe quantum ECC floor. "Just POC" likely doesn't do it justice. (Original comment): Also quantum dabbler (coincidentally dabbled in bitflip quantum error correction research). Skimmed the post/research blog. I believe the key point is the scal…
Google could put themselves and everyone else out of business if the algorithms that underpin our ability to do e-commerce and financial transactions can be defeated. Goodbye not just to Bitcoin, but also Visa, Stripe, Amazon shopping, ...
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Search of what?
Anything. Everything. In domains where the search space is small enough to physically enumerate and store or evaluate every option, search is commonly understood as a process solved by simple algorithms. In domains where the search space is too large to physically realize or index, search becomes "intelligence." E.g. winning at Chess or Go (traditional AI domains) is searching through the space of possible game state…
There is, at present, no quantum algorithm which looks like it would beat the state of the art on Chess, Go, or NP-complete problems in general.
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O(sqrt(N)) is easily dominated by the relative ease of constructing much bigger classical computers though.
Uh, no? Not for large N. There are about 2^152 possible legal chess states. You cannot build a classical computer large enough to compute that many states. Cryptography is generally considered secure when it involves a search space of only 2^100 states. But you could build a computer to search though sqrt(2^152) = 2^76 states. I mean it'd be big--that's on the order of total global storage capacity. But not "bigger t…
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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.
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Perfect forward secrecy doesn't work that well when NSA motto is - store everything now decrypt later. If they intercept the ephemeral key exchange now they can decrypt the message 10 or 50 years later.
Something tells me that by the end of the century only the one-time pads will still be holding their secrets.
I’m a quantum dabbler so I’ll throw out an armchair reaction: this is a significant announcement. My memory is that 256 bit keys in non quantum resistant algos need something like 2500 qubits or so; and by that I mean generally useful programmable qubits. To show a bit over 100 qubits with stability, meaning the information survives a while, long enough to be read, and general enough to run some benchmarks on is some…
A long-term tactic of our adversaries is to capture network traffic for later decryption. The secrets in the mass of packets China assumedly has in storage, waiting for quantum tech, is a treasure trove that could lead to crucial state, corporate, and financial secrets being used against us or made public.
AI being able to leverage quantum processing power is a threat we can't even fathom right now.
Our world is going to change.
Yet another example as to why Google is essentially not going anywhere or ‘dying’ as most have been proclaiming these days.