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Willow, Our Quantum Chip

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Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#441

Post by l33tman »

crishoj wrote: post #434

Take the announcement with a grain of salt. From German physicist Sabine Hoffenfelder: > The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution. The result of this calculation has no practical use. > > They use this particular problem because it has been formally proven (with some technical caveats) that the calculation is difficult to do on a conventional computer (because it uses a lot of entang…

TBH you need to take the youtube influencer Sabine Hoffenfelder with a bigger grain of salt. She has converted to mainly posting clickbait youtube stuff over the last years (unfortunately, she was interesting to listen to earlier).

The RCS is a common benchmark with no practical value, as is stated several times in the blog announcement as well. It's used because if a quantum computer can't do that, it can't do any other calculation either.

The main contribution here seems to be what they indeed put first, which is the error correction scaling.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#442

Post by prettyStandard »

swores wrote: post #428
prettyStandard wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI too. 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...

> " and your intentions matter. " How do you reach that conclusion? Characters in The Sims games technically have us human players as gods, it doesn't mean that when we uninstall the game those characters get to come into our earthly (to them) heaven or have any consequences for actions performed during the simulation?

Sure it would. If you had Sims that went around killing other Sims, there's no way in hell you would promote them, or use their stimulated experiences as a bases for more complex/serious projects.

I'm not deep into LLMs or AI safety right now, but if you have a bad performing AI, you aren't going to use it as a base for future work.

I was about to go to bed so I was rushing through my initial comment... I was just trying to understand the motivations for trying to create a stimulated reality... Look at the resources we spend on AI?

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#443

Post by akira2501 »

readyplayernull wrote: post #11

> 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…

Isn't it really just processing with matrices of imaginary numbers? Which is why you need error correction in the first place because the higher temperature the system the less coherent the phases all become? Thus having absolutely nothing to do with multiverse theory?

I think string theories ideas about extra curled up dimensions are far more likely places to look. You've already got an infinite instantaneous energy problem with multiverses let alone entropy transfer considerations.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#444

Post by perching_aix »

crishoj wrote: post #434

Take the announcement with a grain of salt. From German physicist Sabine Hoffenfelder: > The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution. The result of this calculation has no practical use. > > They use this particular problem because it has been formally proven (with some technical caveats) that the calculation is difficult to do on a conventional computer (because it uses a lot of entang…

They explicitly cover all of these caveats in the announcement.

Problems that benefit from quantum computing as far as I'm aware have their own formal language class, so it's also not like you have to consider Sabine's or any other person's thoughts and feelings on the subject - it is formally demonstrated that such problems exist.

Whether the real world applications arrive or not, you can speculate for yourself. You really don't need to borrow the equally unsubstantiated opinion of someone else.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#445

Post by tcgv »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #22

I really wish the release videos made things a ~tad~ bit less technical. I know quantum computers are still very early so the target audience is technical for this kind of release, but I can’t help wonder how many more people would be excited and pulled in if they made the main release video more approachable.

If you have programming experience, you might find this interesting: back in 2019, when Google announced achieving quantum supremacy, I worked on a personal project to study the basics of quantum computing and share my learnings with others in my blog:

- https://thomasvilhena.com/2019/11/quantum-computing-for-prog...

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#446

Post by prettyStandard »

swores wrote: post #427
a2128 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt we would even register as a blip. The universe is absolutely massive and there's celestial events that are unthinkably massive and complex. Black hole mergers, supernovae, galaxies merging. Hell, think of what chaos happens in the inside of our own sun, and multiply that by 100 billion stars in a galaxy, and multiply that by 100 billion galaxies. Humanity is ultimately inconsequential.

Surely it would depend on what the simulation actually was? If you imagine simulations we can build ourselves, such as video games, it's not hard to add something at the edge of the map that users are prevented from reaching and have the code send "this thing is massive and powerful" data to the players. Who's to say that the simulation isn't actually focussed on earth, and everything including the sun is actually ju…

For me the interesting thing is, assuming miny worlds AND simulation theory are both true. Many worlds would seem to be a way to essentially run a/b tests on the simulation. So how would you separate out/simplify details of your simulation like far away planet stars and galaxies? The speed of light and light cones, don't seem to be enough to make a difference except for on the largest scales.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#447

Post by sesm »

thrance wrote: post #71
vessenes wrote: post #18

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…

The error rates given are still horrendous and nowhere near low enough for the Quantum Fourier Transform used by Shor's algorithm. Taking qubit connectivity into account, a single CX between 2 qubits that are 10 edges aways gives an error rate of 1.5%. Also, the more qubits you have/the more instructions are in your program, the faster the quantum state collapses. Exponentially so. Qubit connectivity is still ridicul…

> Also, the more qubits you have/the more instructions are in your program, the faster the quantum state collapses.

Was this actually measured and published somewhere?

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#448

Post by oniony »

booleandilemma wrote: post #256
hshshshshsh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. We have evidence for this universe though.

I believe their point was that, if you accept the reality of _this_ universe being created from nothing, why wouldn't you also accept the notion of _other_ universes similarly existing too.

I can get on board with that: that there may be other, distinct universes, but I do not understand how this would lead to the suggestion they would be necessarily linked together with quantum effects.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#449

Post by falleng0d »

l33tman wrote: post #441
crishoj wrote: post #434

Take the announcement with a grain of salt. From German physicist Sabine Hoffenfelder: > The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution. The result of this calculation has no practical use. > > They use this particular problem because it has been formally proven (with some technical caveats) that the calculation is difficult to do on a conventional computer (because it uses a lot of entang…

TBH you need to take the youtube influencer Sabine Hoffenfelder with a bigger grain of salt. She has converted to mainly posting clickbait youtube stuff over the last years (unfortunately, she was interesting to listen to earlier). The RCS is a common benchmark with no practical value, as is stated several times in the blog announcement as well. It's used because if a quantum computer can't do that, it can't do any o…

I have observed the change in approach to use aggressive (clickbaity) thumbnails, but I do think the quality of the content has not changed.

And I can't blame her for adopting this trend, in many cases it is the difference between surviving or not on YouTube nowadays.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#450

Post by sesm »

movpasd wrote: post #305
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…

There are compelling arguments to believe in the many-worlds interpretation. No sign of a Heisenberg cut has been observed so far, even as experiments involving entanglement of larger and larger molecules are performed, which makes objective-collapse theories hard to consider seriously. Bohmian theories are nice, but require awkward adjustments to reconcile them with relativity. But more importantly, they are philoso…

"Many-world interpretation" is just a religion, it has nothing to do with physics. Pilot Wave is an example of a physical theory, Copenhagen is an administrative agreement.
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