[HN Gopher] Unveiling our new Quantum AI campus
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       Unveiling our new Quantum AI campus
        
       Author : asparagui
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2021-05-18 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | joshu wrote:
       | i saw a great documentary about this on hulu
        
         | krohling wrote:
         | 'Devs' was the first thing I thought of when I saw this
         | announcement.
        
       | booleandilemma wrote:
       | Powered by not just one, but two buzzwords.
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | The IO video introducing Quantum AI campus was fantastically
         | grating to me. There's so little to say, so little to share,
         | about what is happening, what this is, what it's for: it's just
         | pure marketing fluff, with the thinnest veneer of introductory
         | technical material. 'This is some kind of chip. It goes in this
         | cold thing we built. We're hoping to to inspire others.' Gee
         | frigging thanks.
         | 
         | Tech is either esoteric or exoteric. It either is a thing for
         | only experts to understand and use and put to use, or it is
         | something illuminating, something shareable, is a conveyable
         | experience. Quantum AI combines two of the most opaque, hard to
         | understand fields to make something whose prestige in large
         | part rests upon it being entirely indecipherable to 99.9999999%
         | of humanity.
         | 
         | To which I just keep wanting to say, can we please make
         | personal computing a thing again?
        
       | sgt101 wrote:
       | I think QNN are very interesting from a compsci perspective, and
       | interesting from a quantum tech perspective, but not so much from
       | a real world perspective.
       | 
       | As I understand it loading classical data into a quantum computer
       | - into quantum ram - is a big bottleneck. So running a QNN over a
       | picture of a cat can't give a speedup vs. running it on a
       | classical machine. Is this wrong HN?
       | 
       | I haven't found a result showing QNN's do offer strong speedups
       | for training or testing - I have found papers saying it looks
       | good - but I haven't found the result. I think this may be a
       | literature search fail by me though.
       | 
       | For generalisation I _have_ seen papers claiming that there will
       | be better generalisation with QNN but I _have_ failed to
       | understand this result and _do_ need to work harder!
       | 
       | I also believe that the most promising algorithm for quantum ML
       | (HHL) has been "dequantized" I think that Grover's and QMC are
       | pretty secure but also only quadratic in speed up (I say only -
       | this is because that means there is a window of quantum advantage
       | that may or may not be useful before the quantum algorithms fall
       | off a cliff as well.
       | 
       | Ok - I need to understand this stuff for real, so please shoot me
       | to bits !
        
         | lumost wrote:
         | QC for optimization and other hard search problems is an
         | interesting area for deeper exploration. It's possible that
         | quantum optimizers could be exponentially faster than existing
         | optimization techniques by evaluating multiple minima
         | simultaneously.
         | 
         | Throwing AI on the research campus does help focus what
         | researchers will do there - e.g. research algorithms which can
         | plausibly improve training, inference, and generalization of
         | neural networks/ML models. Rather than researching other more
         | "practical" QC applications such as cryptography.
        
           | typon wrote:
           | > It's possible that quantum optimizers could be
           | exponentially faster than existing optimization techniques by
           | evaluating multiple minima simultaneously.
           | 
           | Is there any known quantum algorithm that gives a speedup
           | over classical algorithms? I don't mean "call Grover as a
           | subroutine" during your standard classical optimization
           | algorithm.
        
             | anon_tor_12345 wrote:
             | I don't understand this question? Grover's algorithm is
             | itself faster than classical search algos.
             | 
             | It is as of yet unknown whether quantum computers are more
             | powerful than classical computers; there is no proof that
             | BQP is strictly bigger than P. There is oracle separation
             | but that's not the same thing.
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | I think that BQP > P is not so important. Exponential
               | advantage of _known_ qalg vs _known_ c_alg when the
               | hardware is available is what 's important.
        
             | sgt101 wrote:
             | Oh sure, Shore's.
             | 
             | Also a bunch more.
        
         | selimthegrim wrote:
         | I think Preskill just had a paper out showing average case
         | advantages for common QML tasks.
        
           | sgt101 wrote:
           | do you have a link?
        
             | selimthegrim wrote:
             | Sorry, I misspoke slightly, but there is an advantage - htt
             | ps://twitter.com/RobertHuangHY/status/1393263028150231041
        
       | Out_of_Characte wrote:
       | I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used
       | interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk but
       | google has done enormous amounts of research into non-classical
       | computing. They've also done their AI projects to solve protein
       | folding faster and more accurate than any contemporary solving
       | models[1]. which is why the name sort of makes sense even though
       | many on HN would appreciate nuance.
       | 
       | "Nature is quantum mechanical: The bonds and interactions among
       | atoms behave probabilistically, with richer dynamics that exhaust
       | the simple classical computing logic."
       | 
       | "Already we run quantum computers that can perform calculations
       | beyond the reach of classical computers."[citation needed]
       | 
       | [1] https://www.deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-
       | for...
        
         | Zenst wrote:
         | > I was sceptical because 'AI' and 'quantum' seems to be used
         | interchangeably and fits your regular snakeoil salestalk
         | 
         | That was my first take - and akin to saying "quantum
         | intelligence" which just reeks of marketing on a synergy
         | overdrive mission.
         | 
         | Of course they are just using quantum hardware/software
         | approach towards AI type problems. So for me it may of been
         | better to say Quantum Annealed AI. But then, as a campus name,
         | it don't have that marketing ring going for it.
         | 
         | One question though that will arise down the line will be
         | ethics, with a classical computer you can drill down and
         | understand fully every bit of decision making if needs be. With
         | a quantum computer, not so easy at all. Maybe possible that
         | they create a good quantum AI system but equally at the same
         | time it is also an evil AI system, only that they observe only
         | the good as that is what they are looking for.
         | 
         | Philosophy is going to have a whole avenue of debate over this
         | in years to come and who knows - AI psychology might be the
         | future job we never expected to happen.
        
           | ampdepolymerase wrote:
           | You realize quantum computing is ultimately just a few linear
           | algebra operations right? There is no more _magic_ in it than
           | conventional neural network based models. Standard ML ethical
           | frameworks are more than sufficient.
           | 
           | Adding "quantum" simply means speed ups for a few specific
           | types of operations. You are not going to get an AGI with the
           | current state of the art in quantum computing.
        
             | inasio wrote:
             | No. See for example the Grover search algorithm. You can
             | use to find whether an item is inside a list in O(sqrt(n)).
        
               | spxtr wrote:
               | I don't understand what you are saying. The parent
               | comment said that quantum allows a few types of
               | operations to get faster, and your response was "No,"
               | followed by a specific algorithm that is faster. Where do
               | you disagree?
        
             | floatboth wrote:
             | Are those quantum speed ups for neural nets even good?
             | 
             | More specifically, are they better than the ones from
             | "neuromorphic" chips like Intel Loihi?
        
         | anon_tor_12345 wrote:
         | >"Already we run quantum computers that can perform
         | calculations beyond the reach of classical computers"
         | 
         | Yea this isn't true. Their 54 qubit machine can simulate random
         | circuits pretty fast but
         | 
         | 1) that's not at all useful and specifically contrived as a
         | test of "quantum supremacy".
         | 
         | 2) totally debatable whether it's actually out of reach:
         | 
         | >In the paper, it is argued that their device reached "quantum
         | supremacy" and that "a state-of-the-art supercomputer would
         | require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent
         | task." We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can
         | be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far
         | greater fidelity
         | 
         | https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/10/on-quantum-suprem...
        
       | jl2718 wrote:
       | Personally I think we'll soon discover that what we're doing in
       | 'quantum' is indistinguishable from classical analog at that
       | frequency and noise temperature, and that will also be the point
       | where it becomes broadly useful and scalable.
        
       | uses wrote:
       | Tiny feedback for anyone reading who worked on this page:
       | https://quantumai.google/learn/lab
       | 
       | It would be great if the audio clips had the standard seek bar
       | with the ability to pause/play. Perhaps when I scroll up or down
       | to a section, pause the current audio clip. Then resume playing
       | it when I come back. But also allow me to seek around. Rather
       | than just restarting from the beginning. Because these clips are
       | several minutes long and I am given no indication of their
       | length.
       | 
       | Currently all I can do is either continue listening for an
       | unknown amount of time, or go to the next/previous section and
       | completely lose my progress.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | In Santa Barbara?
       | 
       | That should be interesting. There's been some good physics from
       | there. Flash LIDAR came from Advanced Scientific Concepts there.
       | 
       | UC Santa Barbara is Hollywood's vision of a college. Everyone is
       | good-looking and the college is right on the beach.
        
       | jboggan wrote:
       | The hardware side has been up there for a long time, and the
       | theoretical side of the team has been in the Venice office. I
       | guess they got a new building in Santa Barbara and wanted an
       | announcement. I wonder if they are forcing the theorists to move
       | up north?
        
       | AJRF wrote:
       | I don't even know how to make strings in C, how the hell am I
       | going to code on a quantum computer. Sigh.
        
       | typon wrote:
       | Why is it called Quantum AI? What does that mean?
        
         | omrjml wrote:
         | Here is a little explanation from TF quantum website.
         | https://www.tensorflow.org/quantum/concepts
        
         | Guest42 wrote:
         | I'd also be curious the goals/budget of Quantum AI.
        
           | timy2shoes wrote:
           | The problem with defining clear goals for Quantum AI is that
           | if you try to measure them then they will change.
        
             | ChrisArchitect wrote:
             | underrated comment
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | The one you measure won't change, just all the rest.
        
         | ducttapecrown wrote:
         | It means you brute force problems with linear algebra on a
         | quantum computer, but quantum computers big enough to brute
         | force things don't exist yet, so they've got a couple-hundred
         | year plan to bootstrap themselves up there.
        
         | luma wrote:
         | Two buzzwords that sound like things that congress would want
         | to have happening in America, lest anyone start thinking about
         | taking action over monoploistic practices elsewhere in the
         | company.
        
       | andred14 wrote:
       | I'm all for fixing hunger and reducing pollution but stop
       | insulting our intelligence we are not stupid:
       | 
       | 1. CO2 is not a problem and is in fact essential for life.
       | 
       | In other words, there is NO climate change problem and supporting
       | this is the fact that all previous climate change predictions
       | have been wrong.
       | 
       | 2. There is no real virus emergency as proven by statistics which
       | show there was no increase in deaths after 2020.
       | 
       | It was all a big lie used to usher in drastic and unwanted
       | changes in society.
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-18 23:01 UTC)