
Launching the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab (2013) - ot
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/05/launching-quantum-artificial.html
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dnautics
at first I read this and immediately thought that google had jumped the shark,
but then when I realized that they are proposing to use quantum computing to
make ANNs tunnel through local minima in converging on solutions, I think
that's a really interesting use case - _if_ quantum adiabatic annealing can be
easily programmed to do this, (whether or not it has any sort of biomimetic
relevance).

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qntmfred
Posted 16th May 2013

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TallGuyShort
Anyone here able to recommend a primer on quantum computing? I have a high-
level understanding of the physics involved, but I get lost as soon as people
start discussing the algorithms.

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hdivider
Drop me an email and I can send you 20+ short PDFs worth of lecture notes from
a quantum information course I took at Imperial College, if you wish.

They're probably as good a 'primer' as any, since they basically go from
undergraduate quantum mechanics to quantum computing (& other topics). Should
certainly make some of the basic quantum algorithms clear (e.g. Grover's).

Failing that, I think Nielsen & Chuang's textbook is really good:

[http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computation-Information-
Annive...](http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computation-Information-Anniversary-
Edition/dp/1107002176/)

It's thorough, naturally, but it does zoom out from time to time.

~~~
mindcrime
_Drop me an email and I can send you 20+ short PDFs worth of lecture notes
from a quantum information course I took at Imperial College, if you wish._

Any chance you'd be willing to just put that stuff "out there" somewhere, link
to them all in a blog post, and submit that here? I'm guessing there would be
more than a few people who would find that interesting...

~~~
hdivider
I'd love to. I'm just not quite sure where lecture notes stand, legally
speaking.

If I send the files to just a few people I theoretically know, I guess it's
like lending a book to a friend. But putting them all up for public download
feels like quite a different matter.

Thoughts?

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not really sure. I've always tended to assume that if you wrote notes,
paraphrasing content that you sat through a lecture on, then you own the
copyright on those notes. But I do think I recall at least one case where a
professor or a university tried to stop a student from distributing notes, but
I don't remember the details...

Here's a couple of articles on the topic:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/prof-sues-
note/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/prof-sues-note/)

[http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/02/do-students-have-
cop...](http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/02/do-students-have-copyright-to-
their-own-notes/)

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/04/aclass-of-
copyrig...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/04/aclass-of-copyright-
thieves-a-lawsuit-over-lecture-notes/)

Unfortunately, IANAL.

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munsteriron
A good book on the topic for non physicist is schrodinger's killer app
published last year. I found entertaining and informative. D-wave computers
are adiabetic not gate based and are generally thought not to have significant
numbers of entangled particles, this does not allow for exponential speed up
that is required for Shor's but should allow for quadratic speed up.

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tedsanders
The consensus seems to ever tipping against the idea that D-wave is a true
quantum computer. I wonder if Google and others regret spending $10mil on the
machine.

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fiatmoney
It's irrelevant if it's "true quantum"; as long as it can solve optimization
problems quicker or cheaper than alternatives, it could be powered by pigeons
for all they care.

~~~
wlievens
But if it's not a QC, it won't solve them any faster. Our classical computers
are pretty efficient these days.

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z3phyr
A little bit off-topic: Aren't quantum computers similar to the 'proposed'
PCMOS analog computers based on memristors and spin torque oscillators?

The programming model looks the same, and the machine code is 'complex', so it
needs to be abstracted just like in proposed probabilistic computers like
DARPA UPSIDE and Synapse?

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DonGateley
I think they ought to host a seminar with Hameroff and Penrose like really
soon.

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carlob
I haven't looked into this for a while, wasn't this quantum consciousness
stuff widely considered a crackpot phase from an otherwise brilliant scientist
(Penrose)?

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newsit
Apparently it WAS until 5 days ago:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm)

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sidcool
I recollect this being posted earlier.

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interesting_guy
so, what are the things that a d-wave system cannot do that a 'pure' quantum
computer can?

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wlievens
Solving certain problems faster than a classical computer.

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Houshalter
So how worried should I be about this? Are quantum computers really powerful
enough to give us strong AI anytime soon?

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Aqueous
The problem with quantum computers is that you never know whether they are one
or not.

