If you were really smarter than me at QM, you’d be able to point out what was wrong with what I said.
The HN downvotes without correction really speak to the hubris around here.
We can conservatively say that even though there is a limit to amount of computation produced in a given volume, temperature range, and time, this limit is still sky-high compared to what we do now. OTOH the speed of light is already a major limiting factor.
There’s a number of facts that make this not sci-fi:
- China has demonstrated distributed quantum networks.
- The US has demonstrated distributed quantum calculations.
- Anyons were recently experimentally verified.
- We have a number of small quantum ALU.
- There are quantum-effect systems in production, just not fully-entangled systems.
- We have quantum ML algorithms for accelerated training.
Nobody has disputed my baseline estimate: that humans will complete a quantum computer in 10-20 years. (If people just disagree there, they should say so.)
However, once you accept that, it’s trivial to see the following sequence:
- AI is slightly smarter than humans, does quantum work 2-5x faster.
- AI develops quantum circuits in 2-4 years that would have taken 10-20 for humans. (See COVID vaccines for power of tech acceleration.)
- Those quantum systems let the AI replace its current systems with faster local ones.
- The AI uses another 1-2 years at this intermediate stage to extend current quantum networking research to unify its quantum data centers into a single computer, giving full global entanglement.
So in 3-5 years, an AI which starts off mildly smarter could finish nearly-done projects and enter an exponential growth curve before we do.
That progression looks like:
- Scale M AI.
- Scale M/K * 2^K, where K is the portion of M at a single data center.
- Scale 2^M AI, when it can fully entangle.
> Because of that, any level of detail is about as believable as any sci—fi.
That’s not true: most major companies in the space have labs looking to turn fundamental research into products, which is the exact opposite of sci-fi.
I think people just haven’t actually thought about this and are responding with fallacies rather than confront an idea they intuitively reject.
Even though I’m right on the technical issues involved.