[HN Gopher] Quantum computing hype is bad for science
___________________________________________________________________
Quantum computing hype is bad for science
Author : nkurz
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-07-21 12:12 UTC (1 days ago)
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| briantakita wrote:
| The Science industry is built on using buzzwords to get research
| $$$. Probably the same with most industries that reach a certain
| institutional scale. Institutional involvement leads to politics
| which leads to buzzwords & right-speak.
|
| Another case of "for the love of money is the root of all kinds
| of evil".
| smoldesu wrote:
| The hype around QC is going to be _essential_ in getting more
| people interested. If we can encourage people to learn the
| concepts of entropy, state and other fundamentals while their
| minds are still plastic, I say go for it!
|
| This article has a very elitist tone, which I can mostly forgive
| because of the subject matter. Hell, I even understand where
| they're coming from with regards to how poorly AI was
| marketed/integrated into our modern workflows. _However_ , I
| think the conjecture that you're reaching is that 'transparency
| matters', which is true (albeit not particularly profound). The
| best solution that I can imagine is ensuring that the next
| generation of programmers has access to quantum runtimes.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are many more decades of research to be done before there
| will be any kind of need for quantum computation programmers.
| Right now the field needs quantum physicists and computer
| science mathematicians to actually develop the physical
| computers and basic operation concepts, not programmers per se.
|
| There is also a good chance that QC will remain a small niche
| in the computing landscape even with fully functional QCs,
| similarly to DSP programming or hardware or real-time code. QCs
| algorithms have classical parts that run on classical
| computers, very little of the actual logic of the program is
| related to quantum effects, even for something like Shor's
| algorithm.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I think DSP programming is a good analogy. There will be a
| handful of codecs/waveforms/algorithms that you treat as a
| black box that you load into the QC, and then the other 99.9%
| of your system will be classical.
| mcguire wrote:
| Interested in _what_ , precisely? Why do you believe usable
| quantum computers will exist in those people's lifetimes?
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Why do more people need to be interested?
|
| Why do we need to ensure access to quantum computers to
| programmers?
|
| Seriously, any programmer can fire up a quantum simulator for
| any number of the quantum instruction languages and be more
| productive than with a real quantum computer.
|
| Because of the hype, we've all been led to believe that we are
| "ready" to program quantum machines and we just need to train
| more people through boot camps, hackathons, and summer schools.
| It's simply not true.
|
| The quantum computers of today _are_ programmable (barely), and
| the programs _do_ run (though you can only run a dozen or so
| "statements" before you get junk results), but they're so
| wildly bad compared to what you'd expect out of a textbook that
| you easily conclude "the scientists have work to do".
|
| Scientists _do_ have more work to do, but it seems like every
| month there's a perfectly respected scientist who gets a $15MM
| series A and starts spouting the same misinforming junk that
| quantum computing is going to help FedEx with logistics, or
| steel mills with operations planning. Then they hire a bunch of
| good academic people, pay them software-engineer salaries, and
| string them along to help them perpetuate the fundraising
| machine--not by actually doing science of course--hoping to
| also have a quantum computer /software/applications/algorithms
| be built as a by-product.
|
| Money is very attractive to people, especially physicists who
| frequently find themselves jumping ship for an alternative,
| higher-paying career. There must be around 100 quantum
| companies now, most of them startups, and--to my knowledge--
| zero of them providing anything demonstrated to be a valuable
| commercial product. Some of them are definitely doing good work
| here and there, but in the bigger picture, the profit motive--
| whether shareholder value or venture capital returns--
| consistently undermines their ability to do research.
| smoldesu wrote:
| So with all that being said, your solutions is to ostracise
| more people? That checks out.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| I didn't propose a solution. But right now, as it stands,
| money is motivating the perpetuation of misinformation. I'm
| OK with that ending.
| mcguire wrote:
| Who is ostracizing anyone? The only solution I see
| suggested is to take a quick look at the teeth of the horse
| you are being sold.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| QC represents a fresh start for computer scientists to make
| their mark, much like machine learning was the past decade.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Computer scientists had QC to "make their mark" for the
| past 30 years, and will continue to have it for the next
| 30. It's available irrespective of an industry full of
| cash-grabbing and misleading marketing.
| mcguire wrote:
| Why do they need a fresh start? Has the hype machine for
| machine learning started to come apart?
| superjan wrote:
| If you have an hour to spare and are interested in what quantum
| computers might be good for in the long run, I recommend this
| interview(podcast, Sean Carrol's Mindscape):
|
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/06/28/153-...
| mikewave wrote:
| I take issue with one part of this. Disclaimer, I work for
| D-Wave....
|
| > It is unclear how exactly one can verify that a "quantum code"
| actually runs on a quantum computer (instead of a classical node
| inserted between the cloud and the QC provider), and there is a
| huge window for fraud there.
|
| I would like to know what the article's author would take as
| proof of this. All I can offer presently is my personal assurance
| as a team member helping to keep D-Wave Leap running. Every day,
| I work with a team of talented scientists, engineers, devops, and
| developers to help ensure everything from pipeline performance to
| monitoring cryogenics, and if there's one thing that I am certain
| of, it's that our end user submissions run on real hardware at a
| few millikelvin about absolute zero.
|
| I am certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that we are using
| quantum effects to achieve low-energy solutions to difficult
| problems using annealing. I'm also certain that we're making huge
| progress; from our massive lead in terms of raw qubit count
| (5000+) to our work making each of those qubits connect to more
| and more of their neighbours with less noise over time. There are
| exciting things coming....
|
| If other companies are getting away with anything less and
| promising they're doing real-time quantum computing in the cloud,
| (1) it would be a huge surprise, and (2) their lives must be a
| lot cushier than ours, because it is a lot of work keeping
| something like this running. You want to talk about the woes of
| having to manage on-prem and hybrid cloud workloads, well, does
| your datacenter have plumbing for liquid helium? You monitor the
| temperature on a few server racks, but do you have to measure ten
| thousand different datapoints about air and fluid temperature and
| pressure?
|
| Honestly, it's a lot of fun, it's an exciting thing to be working
| on, and I don't agree with the author when he complains about
| brain drain. You want brain drain, go and look at the infinitum
| of startups hawking SaaS grift-ware like it's the next best thing
| since sliced bread. Sorry if we find it more interesting to work
| on this than on the next B2B way of slicing off a chunk of
| someone else's revenue for providing something obvious. "We do
| these things because they are hard", as the saying goes.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| If all you can offer is your "personal assurance" then that
| seems to exactly confirms the author's point.
|
| From my reading the article's point was really to note the risk
| of fraud. It did not claim that this kind of fraud is actually
| happening now.
|
| I also think that the article is more nuanced on the topic of
| brain drain than you make it out to be. Is your argument not
| just whataboutery? And what do you think of the article's claim
| that "it may not be a zero-sum game"?
| reikonomusha wrote:
| The thing is, the hardware doesn't do anything useful. So you
| can in theory fake bad results... but that doesn't seem so
| dangerous. If it's bad, there are few people to defraud,
| except maybe investors that are bad at due diligence.
|
| You can also try to fake good results (or even have truly
| good results!), and trust me, the scientific community will
| require unambiguous proof. DWave went through the wringer
| pretty thoroughly some years ago for their claims.
|
| There's another angle too: If the service actually does
| something commercially useful or better, in some sense, it
| might not matter what the specifics of the implementation
| are. Ultimately customers are going to look at price and
| performance and make decisions that way.
| leoc wrote:
| It might not matter commercially, but it certainly matters
| from a scientific POV.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| The scientific stakeholders aren't proving themselves
| with an opaque public cloud API. They're write detailed
| research papers with data that go into peer reviewed
| journals. The data is pretty profoundly scrutinized by
| the community.
|
| If a scientist or company that purportedly does science
| _doesn 't_ do that, they're not taken seriously by other
| members of the scientific community. No one is truly
| believed at face value. I don't see any issue with the
| possibility of bamboozling the community of scientists
| through abject fraud. And there hasn't been any such
| issue yet. (There have been retracted published claims,
| but the retractions happened as a result of scientific
| scrutiny.)
| reikonomusha wrote:
| To add to this as a former employee of a different quantum
| company that provides cloud services, there was absolutely no
| funny business about faking results. If you asked for quantum
| computer results, you got them, and it's painfully obvious too.
|
| Obviously it's in the realm of possibility that a company could
| fake, but I think if anybody was caught doing that, they'd tank
| their reputation within the community extraordinarily quickly.
|
| I haven't heard of any serious or reputable company doing this.
|
| As for other things you've said, I definitely disagree with you
| and agree with the article that there is brain drain. That's
| not to say every commercial entity is fully or continuously
| responsible for it, but DWave, IBM, Google, and every other
| company that currently or formerly over-promises or outright
| lies has drawn people out of academia into frequently senseless
| industrial positions.
| normac2 wrote:
| > To add to this as a former employee of a different quantum
| company that provides cloud services, there was absolutely no
| funny business about faking results. If you asked for quantum
| computer results, you got them, and it's painfully obvious
| too.
|
| As someone totally unfamiliar with this world, I'm wondering
| why it's painfully obvious? Slow?
| reikonomusha wrote:
| The results look terrible and incredibly noisy. Throw more
| than a handful of instructions at any quantum computer
| that's publicly accessible today, and you'll get noisy
| mumbo jumbo.
|
| The noise characteristics are pretty signature-like. It'd
| be an engineering effort unto itself to produce realistic-
| looking noise models and simulations.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's fine, but until the results outshine the conventional
| solutions there is no way for an outsider to tell how they were
| obtained.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Even this is becoming less true with access to deeper levels
| of various vendors' stacks. It's possible to actually do
| pulse-level experiments on various platforms, where the
| results will match theoretical predictions. Again, to _fake_
| that has no benefit to anyone and in fact would take an
| enormous amount of work to create a time-domain solver. For
| just a handful of qubits, it's not even feasible, at least to
| do it accurately.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| There is no enormous work needed to create a time domain
| solver. Libraries like `QuantumOptics.jl` and analogous on
| Matlab, Python and Mathematica let's you define the
| Hamiltonian of an idealized system and solve it. For 16
| qubits the matrix size (dimension) is 2^16=65536, can be
| solved very quickly on a local machine. Furthermore the
| Hamiltonian matrix is sparse enabling more optimizations.
|
| At the moment state of the art supercomputer can simulate
| 47 qubits. For 46 the necessary resources are about 4 times
| smaller. So with handful you meant order of 30 then yes.
| Only a handful of qubits.
| unixhero wrote:
| All I have to say is ... /THREAD!!!
| [deleted]
| tus89 wrote:
| _cough_ machine learning _cough_
| sgt101 wrote:
| sneeze Alphafold2 sneeze
| qayxc wrote:
| There's absolutely no comparing the two fields.
|
| ML already has a _massive_ impact on industry and society as a
| whole. The future of many careers will forever be altered even
| by current ML application, let alone future developments.
|
| From automated face recognition, to customer service, job
| interviews, risk assessment and protein folding, ML has become
| part of our daily lives already to varying degrees (of both
| impact and success).
|
| It's a field that won't go away and will only grow and probably
| change quite a bit in the next decades. Admittedly we're far
| from a Butlerian Jihad-situation, but there's no denying that
| ML is much more than just hype.
|
| AGI, now that's a different story.
| pphysch wrote:
| All hype is "bad" for science. Hype implies emotional investment
| or faith in an expectation, and science is specifically about
| _challenging_ expectations (i.e. hypotheses) via practical
| experimentation.
|
| There is plenty of experimental research, and early practical
| results, being achieved in quantum computing. There is also lots
| of snake oil being peddled by sleazy entrepreneurs. This is true
| for all developing fields.
| yourenotsmart wrote:
| Is it though?
|
| Hype causes people not familiar or well informed into the
| matter to get into it, hoping for big returns. Of course,
| they'll come out severely disappointed, but science and
| technology as a whole would have advanced, thanks to their
| efforts.
|
| Going blind into something with a lot of hype is often an "ice-
| breaker" for humanity into new areas of study.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The article talks about this in good detail and why hype
| leads to:
|
| 1. Brain drain of talent
|
| 2. Ponzi schemes
|
| 3. Damage to the reputation of science
| gadders wrote:
| Things that are always 10 years away:
|
| [1] Those aeroplanes that can fly from London to Australia in 2
| hours
|
| [2] Cold Fusion
|
| [3] Quantum computing
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I really don't understand your list. Are you trying to lump QCs
| in with pseudo-science gobbledygook like cold fusion or Musk's
| surface to surface starship rides?
| gswdh wrote:
| Don't forget solid state batteries.
| chki wrote:
| The distance from London to Sydney is 17.000km. The current
| flight airspeed record is 3.500km/h. I would doubt that
| anything close to 8.500km/h is physically possible without
| using rockets. That's the speed of the fastest missile.
| mrhyyyyde wrote:
| The X-15 has recorded 7,274 km/h airspeeds. I'm no airspeed
| record expert but did some reading.
| dogorman wrote:
| The X-15 was a rocket.
| mcguire wrote:
| Exactly. That would be the point.
| chki wrote:
| But I would claim that nobody has ever said "flight times
| from London to Sydney will go down to 2-3 hours in 10
| years". Si the above example does not really make sense.
| bawolff wrote:
| Is anyone (not selling snake oil) claiming that large scale QC
| is actully only 10 years away? I certainly havent heard that.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Google just announced they plan to have a million qubits in
| less than 10 years. They've not yet demonstrated the ability
| to go past 100.
| Hedgemaster wrote:
| well, Google's CEO also made a furore by stating that in 10
| years quantum computer would break currently used
| encryption.. But guess what? In 10 years Sundar won't be
| with the company anyway ;)
| krastanov wrote:
| I work in this field, and I would say anything between 20%
| and 70% percent of my colleagues believe that useful error
| corrected qubits will exist in less than 10 years (depending
| on what exactly you ask). So I guess the answer is yes, there
| are respected scientists that would wager that we will have
| enough useful qubits for interesting chemistry simulations in
| 10 years.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Cold fusion is still a hypothesis. As for that airplane ride, I
| dunno who was selling you that. What kind of fuel would the jet
| even use?
|
| Quantum Computing though is already here, it's just not
| practical for much outside of a lab setting.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| QC is here in theory, but it is not practical for anything -
| the experiments so far were only intended to prove that the
| thing was an actual quantum computer in the complexity theory
| sense. But it is impossible to actually use Google's device
| or the one in China to compute anything at all, even
| something like factoring 4 using Shor's algorithm is beyond
| the current capabilities.
|
| There is perhaps some more debate about D-Wave's device,both
| its status as a QC and its usefulness.
| RIMR wrote:
| Quantum computing deserves hype, but I'd like to see the stupid
| hype die down.
|
| I've heard claims that quantum computers "connect to alternate
| timeline versions of themselves" and would allow us to
| communicate with people from parallel universes. I've heard that
| they'll let you bypass traditional cryptography with such ease
| that you could steal all of the bitcoins in circulation in an
| afternoon. I've heard that it could guarantee a lottery win with
| only 100 picks.
|
| A bunch of high-concept nonsense that is simply not what Quantum
| computing is going to enable.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Quantum computers don't exist; qubits as they exist today are
| simply sources of entropy. So every time someone does a big
| fanfare announcement of this many qubit "computer" I chuckle a
| bit; ok, you got a bigger "random number generator", cool cool
| cool :)
|
| If you downvote, please also include a link to something that
| proves a quantum computer exists (outside of theoretical papers);
| I'm genuinely interested in being proven wrong.
| throw149102 wrote:
| They've factored 15 into 5 by 3. It's a real computer, even if
| it's too small to do anything useful.
| https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0112176
| gigel82 wrote:
| Thank you for including a link to that experiment, it's
| pretty cool. My naive definition of a quantum computer would
| be a general purpose machine that can execute quantum
| programs on controlled inputs and produce valid outputs
| (expanded from the definition of a classical computer: "a
| programmable electronic device designed to accept data,
| perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations at
| high speed, and display the results of these operations.").
| mikewave wrote:
| I'm sitting thirty feet away from one, friend. It exists. The
| pulse tube cooler is making a comforting squelchy sound. There
| is more entropy in your post.
| gigel82 wrote:
| So, what does it actually do besides squelching and producing
| random numbers?
| reikonomusha wrote:
| Quantum computers do more than produce random numbers. They
| follow predictable statistics predicted by quantum mechanics.
| These computers also run programs.
|
| Maybe your definition of "quantum computer" doesn't agree with
| the field at large. What's your definition?
|
| What do you think about Google's supremacy experiment? Do you
| have objections to their results? [0]
|
| This is one of many papers by Google, IBM, Rigetti, and many
| other quantum computer manufacturers.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1666-5
| [deleted]
| gigel82 wrote:
| Just to be pedantic, that experiment literally generates
| certifiable random numbers; it is also unclear if they have a
| real physical device; it appears their "Sycamore" design is
| theoretical and actually simulated on the Julich (classic)
| supercomputer.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| When I said they do more than "produce random numbers", I
| meant that they do more than such than that which is out of
| their control (i.e., due to noise). By the physics of a
| quantum computer, at their very foundation, they're random
| number generators. What you program on a quantum computer
| is, more or less, the shape of the distribution from which
| they sample.
|
| A linear congruential generator from Knuth programmed on a
| classical computer produces controlled pseudorandom
| numbers. So what? Whether a LCG or a program to produce
| controlled samples from a goofy Porter-Thomas distribution,
| they're both coming from machines that were programmed to
| do a job. If the machine was neither a computer nor
| programmable, then the job could not be done.
|
| You haven't refuted the point of the published existence of
| a computer. The paper includes both the results of a
| program running on a quantum computer, and a comparison of
| the results as simulated by a classical computer, the
| latter taking several orders of magnitude to complete at
| several orders of magnitude increased cost.
| okareaman wrote:
| The AI winter didn't seem to hurt AI
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
| mcguire wrote:
| The AI winter of the 1980s destroyed quite a few careers. Many
| of the TAs when I was an undergrad graduated into that winter.
| yourenotsmart wrote:
| It destroyed many people's careers, but it didn't destroy AI.
| There's a difference.
| sgt101 wrote:
| It destroyed a particular vision of AI - that of Knowledge
| Engineering.
| sampo wrote:
| AI is very useful, even if the pioneers had to give up on the
| dream of human-level or human-like intelligence. There is
| quantum cryptography, but other than that I find it hard to
| find practical value for quantum computers before they reach
| the limit, maybe around 80 qubits fit for general computation,
| that they start to be faster than classical computers. Faster
| for solving meaningful problems, not useless problems designed
| for the quantum computer to solve fast.
| bitwize wrote:
| The AI field pre-winter has been obliterated by the winter.
| What is now called AI are the parts of the field that got less
| attention and funding back in the day, mainly prediction by
| statistical analysis of past data.
| ssivark wrote:
| That this is a post on LinkedIn shouldn't take away from the
| important points it is making :-)
|
| As a physicist who knows a little bit about quantum computing, my
| understanding is that we're far far away from building usable
| quantum computers (it's still at an applied research stage, and
| nowhere close to "just an engineering/design problem") -- all
| hype be damned.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| Would you be willing to elaborate on why you think it's a
| research problem rather than an engineering problem?
| derekp7 wrote:
| I like to draw an analogy to slide rules. A typical slide rule
| has a precision of about 3 - 4 significant digits (it gets
| worse at the higher end of the scale, better at the lower end).
| To get another digit out of it, you need one 10 times long, or
| a way to make the markings 10 times more accurate. So
| effectively you have an intractable problem trying to build a
| slide rule that is precise to a large number of significant
| digits.
|
| Is the issue with quantum computers somewhat similar? I know
| next to nothing about the mechanical aspects of them, but based
| on the what I've read it is considered a breakthrough whenever
| another qubit is added.
| kens wrote:
| As a historical note, this is a primary reason why digital
| computers replaced analog computers. If you want another
| digit of accuracy out of an analog computer, you need
| components that are 10 times as accurate, requiring expensive
| precision resistors and capacitors. But if you want another
| digit of accuracy out of a digital computer, you just process
| four more bits and you can still use cheap, inaccurate
| components.
|
| While analog computers are almost entirely forgotten now,
| they were widely used even into the 1970s. They could solve
| differential equations almost instantaneously, while digital
| computers needed to chug through calculations before
| producing the answer. But digital computers steadily became
| faster until they could generate answers in real-time, but
| more accurate and easier to program.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think its much too early to tell. We know really well about
| slide rules. We are still learning what the best way to build
| quantum computers are, and how different methods scale.
| NohatCoder wrote:
| So far the empirical evidence is pretty unanimous: None of
| the methods scale.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| It's certainly not a breakthrough when another qubit is
| added. It's currently typically a breakthrough when another 9
| to the fidelity is added, or a 0 to the qubit lifetime is
| added.
| fsh wrote:
| This is a pretty good analogy for the state of quantum
| computers right now!
|
| One difference is that (in principle) it is possible to do
| quantum error correction. Essentially this turns a number of
| imperfect "physical" qubits into a perfect "logical" qubit.
| However, this requires extremely low error rates of the
| physical qubits to begin with and creates a lot of overhead.
| All existing quantum computers are much too small and noisy
| to implement quantum error correction except for some proof-
| of-principle experiments. I am somewhat pessimistic that any
| of the current technologies can be improved enough to make it
| possible in practice.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| I like to tell people that actual, programmable quantum
| computers _do_ exist (which is a very important point--they're
| not vaporware), but exactly like you say, in order to make them
| useful and scalable, more "actual science" needs to happen.
| xondono wrote:
| They really don't though. We have some things that if you
| squint a little, and are willing to stretch the words, look
| like a quantum computer.
| reikonomusha wrote:
| They really do, and there are mountains of published
| experiments unambiguously verifying such.
| anon_tor_12345 wrote:
| they do and you can get time on one (5 qubits) right now
|
| https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/composer/files/new
|
| if you don't think these are computers then you just don't
| know what a computer really is
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_(computer_science)
|
| they're not useful at all but they're still real actual
| unadulterated computers.
| Hedgemaster wrote:
| pls note a difference between a 'logical qubit' and a
| 'physical qubit'.. currently they don't have even 1
| logical qubit, and for quantum computer to be of any use
| it should have >10k logical qubits...
| xondono wrote:
| By this logic a 74LS138 is a "digital computer".
|
| It's limited because it has only 3 bits, but if you play
| with the input bits, the output bits change!
| mikewave wrote:
| You can access a quantum computer - to be precise, a
| quantum _annealer_ right now, for free, via D-Wave Leap. It
| may not be gate model, but it does compute using quantum
| effects, and it is useful for optimization problems,
| materials research, and other applications.
|
| No squinting required.
| Laakeri wrote:
| Is there some fair comparison of D-Wave annealer vs
| classical methods on optimization problems? I remember
| seeing papers where it was compared to some naive methods
| or the runtime of D-Wave approximation algorithm was
| compared to the runtime of classical exact algorithm --
| obviously apples vs oranges.
| xondono wrote:
| Except there's a lot of people (myself included) who
| don't consider a quantum annealer to be a quantum
| computer.
|
| There has been also very little if any actual research in
| other fields powered with quantum computing.
|
| We can keep moving the goal posts and claim that we have
| made it, but the fact is that QC keeps overpromising and
| under delivering.
| [deleted]
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| The hype is bad in its own right, but it's a symptom of how
| science is being funded and rewarded, which is a much bigger
| problem.
| daxfohl wrote:
| My feeling is there's as much anti-hype as there is hype these
| days. I'll continue with the maxim "progress is always slower
| than you think in the short term, and faster than you think in
| the long term."
| reikonomusha wrote:
| The quantum computing industry definitely had a lot more hype
| than anti-hype. There is a very small minority of scientists
| who actually speak up against false or misleading claims, but a
| majority are either silent (why gratuitously jeopardize your
| own career or your funding avenues?) or amplify the hype
| (because their newfound startup depends on lay investors being
| excited for any reason so they'll continue to put tens of
| millions of dollars in).
|
| (To be clear, there's a ton to be excited about in quantum
| computing, and there are truly legitimate careers to be had
| both as a scientist and as an engineer. But what's exiting
| currently isn't very marketable or fashionable!)
| chestertn wrote:
| This has also harming other fields. I work as a researcher in a
| traditional engineering field with a very long tradition and well
| stablished methods.
|
| There is a push to use AI and Quantum such that in order to get
| funding or publish papers you need to say that you're applying
| XYZ AI technique to solve a well known engineering problem.
|
| Because funding agencies want to sell to their investors or
| government managers that they are in the new hot trend, if you
| want to get funding money you need to have something related in
| your proposal. Of course, having previously published papers on
| the topic helps so that motivates people to send papers on the
| topic. The journal editors know that the topic is hot so they
| prioritize papers on this topic as their metrics will increase.
|
| The result is tons of rushed papers saying "Applying XYZ AI
| technique to well known engineering problem" usually without
| examining previous research methods or proper benchmarks.
|
| At the end the only barrier for this bro to happen is the
| individual moral standing of each researcher. Unfortunately,
| careerism usually trumps over this.
|
| Sorry if this was too bleak.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > There is a push to use AI and Quantum such that in order to
| get funding or publish papers you need to say that you're
| applying XYZ AI technique to solve a well known engineering
| problem.
|
| How different is AI from good old fashioned stats again?
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