The D-Wave quantum computer solves a general class of optimization problems very quickly. It cannot speed up any arbitrary computing task, but the class of computing problems which include an optimization task it can speed up appears to be large.

Many "AI Planning" tasks will be a lot faster with quantum computers. It would be interesting to learn what the impact of quantum computing will be on other specific AI domains like NLP and object recognition.

We also have:

-Reversible computing -Analog computing -Memristors -Optical computing -Superconductors -Self-assembling materials

And lithography, or printing, just keeps getting faster on smaller and smaller objects and is going from 2d to 3d.

When Bostrom starts to talk about it, I would like to hear people's opinions about untangling the importance of hardware vs. software in the future development of AI.