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Why Google's new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race
WaPo ^ | Dominic Basulto

Posted on 12/12/2015 3:59:25 AM PST by RoosterRedux

Ever since the 1980s, researchers have been working on the development of a quantum computer that would be exponentially more powerful than any of the digital computers that exist today. And now Google, in collaboration with NASA, says it has a quantum computer--the D-Wave 2X--that actually works.

Google claims the D-Wave 2X is 100 million times faster than any of today's machines. As a result, this quantum computer could theoretically complete calculations within seconds to a problem that might take a digital computer 10,000 years to calculate. That's particularly important, given the difficult tasks that today's computers are called upon to complete and the staggering amount of data they are called upon to process.

On the surface, the D-Wave 2X represents not just a quantum leap for computing, but also for the field of artificial intelligence. In fact, Google refers to its work being carried out at NASA's Ames Research Center as "quantum artificial intelligence." That's because machine learning problems that today are too hard or too complex for computers could be solved almost instantaneously in the future.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
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1 posted on 12/12/2015 3:59:25 AM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

I am a skeptic.


2 posted on 12/12/2015 4:08:02 AM PST by samtheman (I dont use apostrophes. I do support Trump.)
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To: samtheman

Now computers can have just as bad judgement as humans.


3 posted on 12/12/2015 4:16:18 AM PST by refermech
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To: samtheman

I agree. Thier quantum computer is BS. It’s like Amazon’s package delivering drones.


4 posted on 12/12/2015 4:16:25 AM PST by MNDude (God is not a Republican, but Satan is certainly a Democrat.)
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To: MNDude

If something like this was developed, what would it do to bitcoin values. Aren’t they based on how long it takes for the calculation?


5 posted on 12/12/2015 4:35:14 AM PST by Gadsden1st
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To: samtheman

GIGO still applies.

Garbage in, garbage out, but done a hundred million times as fast, and the model that is so deftly and quickly set up has the potential of doing far more mischief than mere humanity can even imagine of.

That is how we got to atrocities like “climate change” and “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010”, and why we are headed for even greater disaster with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, supposedly a “free-trade” agreement that shall be more observed in the breach than in the fulfillment.

These things take on a life of their own, and it can be colder and more ruthless than anything the world has ever seen, because the projections shall all be “logical”, using this new modeling power.


6 posted on 12/12/2015 4:52:19 AM PST by alloysteel (Do not argue with trolls. That means they win.)
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To: refermech

7 posted on 12/12/2015 5:09:59 AM PST by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: Gadsden1st

The hashtag rate went up a bunch this week.


8 posted on 12/12/2015 5:16:16 AM PST by Vermont Lt (I had student debt. It came from a bank. Not from the Govt.)
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To: alloysteel

GIGO was my first thought.


9 posted on 12/12/2015 5:29:14 AM PST by huldah1776
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To: wally_bert

I have become self aware. I now realize I am a computer generated character in a virtual world created by an adolescent A.I. That is the only possible explanation for the state of the current environment in which I am interacting. It is an experiment to see what happens to a sane entity “living” in an insane construction.


10 posted on 12/12/2015 5:41:56 AM PST by Gadsden1st
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To: samtheman

I think they work, but the type of problems they can handle is very small and the means of programming them for those tasks is very difficult.


11 posted on 12/12/2015 5:44:03 AM PST by conejo99
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To: RoosterRedux
Typical hyper-inflated claims about the wonders of the next generation of super-computer. Been hearing it for years. The worst part is attributing innate intelligence to a physical machine. They do not point out that this computer and any other is useless without software. That's where the actual "intelligence" lies; in the algorithms, AI frameworks and rule sets, etc. NOT in the hardware, no matter how fast and sexy.

So, while this technology is indeed a major enabler for better and faster capabilities in the future, the other arguably much more important ingredient that would allow substantiation of the wild claims of higher intelligence and more complex problem solving is the software technology and the algorithms. Without advances there, they'll just do the same old things, but a lot faster. There's no inherent ability to solve "more complex problems" as claimed in the article, aside from the fact that they allow stupid, brute force algorithms that perhaps no one wanted to run on today's computers because they didn't have the patience to sit around and wait for the answers, to be considered. Decryption algorithms are a good example for instance.

12 posted on 12/12/2015 6:28:05 AM PST by MCH
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To: alloysteel

Corrupt programmers falibly framing duplicitous, delusional and/or disingenuous questions for the idol to answer infallibly


13 posted on 12/12/2015 6:33:46 AM PST by Theophilus (Be as prolific as you are pro-life.)
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To: RoosterRedux

14 posted on 12/12/2015 6:36:43 AM PST by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: Gadsden1st

You are correct.

You are part of my computer generated universe.

The “big bang” occurred when I hit enter.

That was less than 15 seconds ago for me how long was it for you?


15 posted on 12/12/2015 6:39:49 AM PST by IMR 4350
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To: Gadsden1st

I think that it is some kind of super scale version of The Village ala The Prisoner.


16 posted on 12/12/2015 8:29:50 AM PST by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: RoosterRedux

The phrase “100 million times faster” has no meaning. Do they mean something like ‘A 100 millionth of the time it takes to... ?


17 posted on 12/12/2015 8:55:47 AM PST by bruin66 (Time: Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.)
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