Soccer Field Sized Quantum Computer Proposed

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-call-for-a-soccer-field-sized-quantum-computer/

This is one of those ideas that probably won't get any traction simply because the technology is still in its early infancy. Its a good bang-for-your-buck at the proposed price, but competing technology already being developed could easily make it an expensive dinosaur to operate within as few as three years. In fact, because nobody has ever built anything like this its all that much more likely that they will run into serious unforeseen problems attempting to get it to work. The math, physics, and engineering all say it should work, but reality has a way of humbling the best of us. Intel found this out when they first had to switch to multicore computing due to a physical limitation in silicon that nobody had ever suspected existed and that setback the entire industry for over a decade. For a supercomputer, a decade delay would be a death sentence, especially, considering there are already versions being worked on that can even operate at room temperature using more conventional silicon chips. What this proposal really highlights is the fact we should have a full scale quantum computer of perhaps as much as 168 cubits in the next few years with Google having already promised to provide a 50 cubit one in that time frame. It also highlights the fact that quantum technologies and computing are already becoming the next moonshot investment of countries and industries around the globe and the AI and other things such technology makes possible is about to become the next arms race.

Theoretically, somewhere between 168-300 cubit quantum computer could reveal the mathematical foundations of a Theory of Everything. The last time we came up with two great theories, Relativity and quantum mechanics, the result was the advent of "Big Science" in the 1920s in which every industry started investing in their own research and, later, WWI and WWII as countries fought using the scientific insights gained to developed new weapons. Forget about tanks and things like that, it was radar that won the war for the allies and the atom bomb that put a quick end to the war with Japan. Germany did not attempt to take over the world simply because they had the industrial might, but because they knew damned well they had the finest scientists on the planet. Their atom bomb program was delay and even sabotaged from within, yet, if they could have held out for a few years they would have developed one anyway and its not an understatement to claim they simply bit off more than they could chew all at one time.

This is the kind of thing that makes me worry about the immediate future and just how soon the crap is going to hit the fan all over again. Not because somebody will build it, but because its becoming all too easy for them to start another arms race.

 

So could these quantum computers predict what were going to do next.I mean the actions of individual people?

 

They should shed an enormous amount of light on how anything works including any self-organizing system such as the weather, your dna, your brain, etc. My own belief is they will eventually make about half of anything imaginable extremely predictable including whatever most people might choose to do. The more attached people are to specific viewpoints the more predictable they become and, already, you can buy things like a cellphone that doubles as a lie detector and is very accurate.

 

and who would control this computer and get all the special info from it?

 

So I wouldn't have to think.I could just get the computer to tell me what to do next...As it already know. Lol.

 

Yes, already the computers are starting to take over banking and stock market trading and a Chinese company recently replaced 90% of their workforce with robots and increased productivity some 250%. They certainly can't do worse at telling us what should do than we already do for each other and the advantage of computers is they can improve a lot faster. Soon enough, politicians and industrial leaders may find themselves having to consult computers before making a single move and may find their old skills are rapidly becoming outdated. Of course, the more they drag their feet and protest the easier they make it for the competition to catch up.

 

It has the potential to be "Automatic For The People".But I'm afraid it won't be.Automation is going to put a lot of people out of work,so we really need a new kind of society.Will this evolve organically or do we it require some kind of top-down remodelling?.If it's just "Money and guns" doing the talking,as you often say,Wu,then what chance have we?

 

Even money and guns require technology to keep up with their competition and this kind of technology will make their more brute force approaches progressively less viable. Right now places like the US have huge advantages such as enormous populations, enormous resources, etc. that are difficult for anyone else to compete with, but systems logic provides such solutions and requires more cooperation to implement. Either people with money and guns learn how to cooperate and encourage more cooperation to achieve their goals or they will steadily become less competitive. Once the machines can help people organize any way they prefer they won't be as limited by their human fallibility and limitations.

 

That is what the corporations and governments are fighting over right now. Google and Microsoft have increasingly been fighting with Homeland Security over who gets to read our emails first and Apple has run into trouble with the government insisting they provide the codes to unlock cellphones. Hence, the reason the entire semiconducting industry has made developing AI their goal because its, apparently, the same mathematics and, once you have the math, the rest is merely engineering.

Due to IBM getting in on the ground floor they converted much of their business to these efforts much sooner than everyone else and have close ties to the US government. Rather than attempting to figure out what would be the next big breakthrough, which is virtually impossible, they made a direct attack on the fundamental mathematics and physics involved that were more approachable including mapping the synaptic connections of the brain of a cat and designing a liquid quantum computer that can shield its own core from environmental noise. Physicists have already extended the theoretical lifetime in which a quantum computer can sustain entanglement to about 40 minutes, with twenty minutes being the minimum required, and someone recently figuring out how to extend this ten fold. Applying such insights to their liquid quantum computer means they may be able to run the thing indefinitely and crunch any numbers imaginable, without requiring a football field full of cryogenic equipment.

 

That is what I'm working on writing, "The Book That Can Never Be Written". Its mathematics, but metaphorical mathematics that are as emotional as they are logical and can help humanity pick themselves up by their bootstraps and leave a lot of the worst of the current scientific revolution behind them. The Rainbow Family has a myth that, one day, they will help to pick up the pieces and restore balance in nature. Unfortunately, that may not happen until after WWIII or a terrible environmental collapse occurs and, as far as I can tell, the shit is about to start hitting the fan in earnest within three years or so.