Comment on Open thread, July 23-29, 2013

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 03:41:07 GMT

Even as a researcher of practical implementations of quantum computers, I'm having difficulty answering this.

I'm tempted to go 50/50 with 1. We have AGI before large scale (more than 40 entangled computational qubit) quantum computers, or 2. Quantum computers will only marginally accelerate AGI timelines.

Large scale quantum computers would greatly accelerate research of a lot of sub-problems in chemistry and physics, but it's hard frame those gains in terms of what we need to do to actually build an AGI. From a fundamental algorithmic-gains perspective, I think quantum computers will remain niche for quite a while even after we can build large ones.

Then again, I think similar pessimism was expressed about digital computers shortly before they permeated just about every part of our culture. I'd be overjoyed if everyone had a quantum computer in their home.

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