ChrisHallquist comments on Who thinks quantum computing will be necessary for AI? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: ChrisHallquist 28 May 2013 10:59PM

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Comment author: ChrisHallquist 29 May 2013 12:59:01AM *  5 points [-]
  1. No reason I know of.
  2. None, in my opinion (and, I think the opinion of most neuroscientists)
  3. None that I know of.

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.)

Comment author: jsteinhardt 29 May 2013 05:13:25PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: ESRogs 29 May 2013 07:40:17PM 3 points [-]

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?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 29 May 2013 11:38:57PM 2 points [-]

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).

Comment author: ESRogs 30 May 2013 01:11:57AM 0 points [-]

Gotcha, thanks.