So I was reading some info and watching videos about the D-Line/NASA/Google quantum computer. I understand why this thing was built but how the heck do you program something like that?

Anyone concerned that having such a powerful computer coupled with AI is slightly nerve wrenching?

D-Wave?

What's unnerving is what Google will try to do with it.

@skprog Instead of showing me an ad for stuff I've recently looked at maybe they might actually show me an ad for something I didn't even know I wanted

@ctmalloy yep that one too!

@skprog was thinking the same thing. A computer capable of knowing what you want before you do could be pretty costly to your wallet.

I'm both excited and nervous about the future!

@Matt-B All I have to say is Moore's law fizzled out, we have yet to properly and universally apply parallelism and we still haven't a concrete solution for the fact that our transistor shrinking problem is about to be affected at the quantum level. Qubits are the least of my worries

Well AI does not necessary mean full fledged AI. Most of the cases we use job specific AI.

D-Wave (and others) work just like a normal CPU. You can store qubits in memory locations, retrieve them, and push them through gates (like AND, OR, NOT or other composite gates).

Now, about the AI part. Current AIs are deterministic. Given a specific state and input data, it will always give the same output. Quantum computers are by nature probabilistic. Quantum computers are not faster classical computers. They are an entirely different class of computer which is specialized in a specific set of calculations, just a different set from what we currently consider normal.

@SZenC Human behavior is probabilistic.

@AlgoRythm I'd say that humans are deterministic. But regardless of that, we don't have any clue currently how to build an actual probabilistic AI. So the argument that quantum computers will revolutionize AI instantly is wrong.

At some point we might be able to run AI on quantum computers, but as of now we don't have a clue as to how to use quantum effects to our benefit.

@SZenC
Exactly
The qubit unlike the classical bits can store any number of possible values in terms of their probability.
More so, at any point of time, the same var could be holding 2 or more different values (entangled).

This is just how quantum mechanics works, even though it's hard for us muggles to perceive.
And yes, wrt quantum mechanics, we are all muggles

@graviton now that is a nice and simple explanation. Thanks for dummying for this muggle ;)

@Matt-B
We must although note that any real quantum processing in the quantum mechanical term is still far from reach.
The simplest, smartest and smallest quantum computer that could ever be made can be thought of like an electron which is capable of having infinite possible states to serve all our human computing needs, but we'll never be able to create such a device to control the infinite possible states with a qubit.
These QuantComps that are coming up, try to come as close as possible to this quantum nature and still be very powerful compared to the classical approach.
But remember, Heisenberg 🤐 is the one who knocks Google and IBM too.
You are already living in a quantum device that powerful.

There you go
That's your !muggle version;