On Fri, Sep 27, 2024 at 1:45 PM PGC <multiplecit...@gmail.com> wrote:
> *there are profound theoretical and practical obstacles that remain > unresolved. Issues such as error correction, decoherence, and the physical > scalability of qubit systems* *As AAronson explains, for quantum error correction to kick in you need about 99.99% reliability, otherwise you create more errors than you correct; 25 years ago the reliability was about 50%, today it's 99.9%. And there's no indication that the rate of improvement is about to stop or even slow down. I suggest you read Aaronson's entire article, he addresses many of your other concerns, and those of Gil Kalai.* *Quantum Computing: Between Hope and Hype* <https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8329> *> Aaronson's enthusiasm is reminiscent of earlier hype cycles in > technology. For instance, his optimistic views on artificial intelligence * *Huh? Aaronson was never on the AI hype train, but on his blog I criticized him for NOT being on it. He said he was very surprised at the extraordinarily rapid development of AI during the last two years but said "Even with hindsight, I don’t know of any principle by which I should’ve predicted what happened". We then had the following dialogue: * *ME: But you knew that Albert Einstein went from understanding precisely nothing in 1879 to being the first man to understand General Relativity in 1915, and you knew that the human genome only contains 750 megs of information, and yet that is enough information to construct an entire human being. So whatever the algorithm was that allowed Einstein to extract information from his environment was, it must have been much much less than 750 megs. That's why I've been saying for years that super-intelligence could be achieved just by scaling things up, no new scientific discovery was needed, just better engineering. Quantity was needed not quality, although I admit I was surprised it happened so fast because I thought more scaling up would be required. * *Aaronson: Knowing that an algorithm takes at most 750MB (!) to describe doesn’t place any practical upper bound on how long it might take to discover that algorithm!”* *Me: I say why not? We know for a fact that the human genome is only 750 MB (3 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases, so each base can represent 2 bits and there are 8 bits per byte) and we know for a fact it contains a vast amount of redundancy (for example 10,000 repetitions of ACGACGACGACG) and we know it contains the recipe for an entire human body, not just the brain, so the technique the human mind uses to extract information from the environment must be pretty simple, vastly less than 750 MB. I’m not saying an AI must use that exact same algorithm but it does tell us that such a simple thing must exist. For all we know an AI might be able to find an even simpler algorithm, after all random mutation and natural selection managed to find it so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that an intelligence might be able to do even better. * *Aaronson: Come on! 256^750,000,000 is vastly greater than the number of possibilities one could search through within the lifetime of the universe.* *Me: I agree, and yet it's a fact that random mutation and natural selection managed to stumble upon it in only about 500 million years. The only conclusion that one can derive from that is there must be a VAST number of algorithms that works just as well or better than the one that Evolution found. And if it had found one that worked I'm certain intelligence can find one too and could do so in a lot less than 500 million years because evolution is a slow, extremely inefficient and cruel way to create complex objects, but until it finally got around to making a brain it was the only way to do it. * *Also, 750 Mb is just the upper limit, the real number must be much much less. * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> mml Even if I share the security concerns at this point: Improved gate fidelity > is a necessary but not sufficient condition for building a scalable, > fault-tolerant quantum computer. As physicist Mikhail Dyakonov has > cautioned, there are profound theoretical and practical obstacles that > remain unresolved. Issues such as error correction, decoherence, and the > physical scalability of qubit systems pose significant challenges. The > threshold theorem suggests that below a certain error rate, quantum error > correction can, in theory, make quantum computation feasible. However, the > overhead in terms of additional qubits and operations required for error > correction is enormous. Peter Shor himself has acknowledged that the > resources needed for practical quantum error correction are daunting with > current technology. > > Aaronson's enthusiasm is reminiscent of earlier hype cycles in technology. > For instance, his optimistic views on artificial intelligence did not > always engage deeply with how general reasoning abilities were being > achieved or demonstrated! Fully on hype train there. This pattern raises > concerns about the balance between genuine technological progress and > premature excitement that may not fully account for underlying complexities. > > Other experts advocate for a more measured perspective. Gil Kalai, for > example, has been a vocal skeptic about the scalability of quantum > computers, emphasizing that quantum error rates might not be reducible to > the levels required for practical machines. His arguments suggest that > noise and decoherence could be fundamental barriers, not just engineering > challenges to be overcome with incremental improvements. > > On Friday, September 27, 2024 at 6:36:21 PM UTC+2 John Clark wrote: > >> *It looks like conventional Superintelligence is not the only revolution >> that's going to make our world almost unrecognizable before 2030 or so. >> Scott Aaronson has been working in the field of quantum computing since the >> late 1990s but he has always strongly objected to the hype surrounding >> them, for years he said practical quantum computers might not be possible >> and even if they were he didn't expect to see one in his lifetime. But I >> noticed Aaronson's tone started to change about two years ago and he now >> thinks we will either have a practical quantum computer very soon or we >> will discover something new and fundamental about quantum mechanics that >> renders such a thing impossible. He says "Let’s test quantum mechanics in >> this new regime. And if, instead of building a QC, we have to settle for >> “merely” overthrowing quantum mechanics and opening up a new era in >> physics—well then, I guess we’ll have to find some way to live with that".* >> >> *The following are more quotations from Aaronson's latest blog but I >> think it would be well worth your time to read the entire thing: * >> >> *"**If someone asks me why I’m now so optimistic, the core of the >> argument is 2-qubit gate fidelities. We’ve known for years that, at least >> on paper, quantum fault-tolerance becomes a net win (that is, you >> sustainably correct errors faster than you introduce new ones) once you >> have physical 2-qubit gates that are ~99.99% reliable. The problem has >> “merely” been how far we were from that. When I entered the field, in the >> late 1990s, it would’ve been like a Science or Nature paper to do a 2-qubit >> gate with 50% fidelity. But then at some point the 50% became 90%, became >> 95%, became 99%, and within the past year, multiple groups have reported >> 99.9%. So, if you just plot the log *of the infidelity* as a function *of >> year* and stare at it—yeah, you’d feel pretty optimistic about the next >> decade too!* >> *Or pessimistic, as the case may be! To any of you who are worried about >> post-quantum cryptography—by now I’m so used to delivering a message of, >> maybe, eventually, someone will need to start thinking about migrating from >> RSA and Diffie-Hellman and elliptic curve crypto* [which bitcoin uses]* to >> lattice-based crypto, or other systems that could plausibly withstand >> quantum attack. I think today that message needs to change. I think today >> the message needs to be: yes, unequivocally, worry about this now. Have a >> plan.*" >> >> *Quantum Computing: Between Hope and Hype* >> <https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8329> >> >> >> ecc >> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8b504eea-4390-444b-8be2-e096d1872bc3n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8b504eea-4390-444b-8be2-e096d1872bc3n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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