= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
gwern comments on Who thinks quantum computing will be necessary for AI? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (101)
Why would QC be relevant? What quantum effects does the brain exploit? Or what classical algorithms which are key to AI tasks would benefit so enormously from running on a genuine quantum computer (as opposed to a quantum or quantum-inspired algorithm running on a classical computer) that they would make the difference between AI being possible and impossible?
The thought is not that QC is actually likely to be necessary for AI, just that, with all the people saying AI is impossible (or saying things that make it sound like they think AI is impossible, without being quite so straightforward about it), it would be interesting to find people who think AI is [i]just hard enough[/i] to require QC.
My own view, though, is that AI is neither impossible nor would require anything like QC.
(Edit: if I had to make a case that AI is likely to require QC, I might focus on brain emulation and citing the fact that quantum chemistry models increase exponentially in their computational demands as the number of atoms increases.
In reality, I think we'd likely be able to find acceptable approximations for doing brain emulation, but maybe someone could take this kind of arguments and strengthen it. At least, it would be somewhat less surprising to me than if the brain turned out to be a quantum computer in a stronger sense.)
This post made me realize that the following fun fact: if AI were in BQP but not in BPP, then that would provide non-negligible evidence for anthropics being valid.
Could you flesh that out a bit? Is the idea that it's just one more case where a feature of our universe turns out to be necessary for consciousness?
Yes, and a pretty weird feature at that (being in BQP but not P is pretty odd unless BQP was designed to contain the problem in the first place).
Gotcha, thanks.