First Demonstration of Artificial Intelligence On a Quantum Computer

KentuckyFC writes: Machine learning algorithms use a training dataset to learn how to recognize features in images and use this 'knowledge' to spot the same features in new images. The computational complexity of this task is such that the time required to solve it increases in polynomial time with the number of images in the training set and the complexity of the "learned" feature. So it's no surprise that quantum computers ought to be able to rapidly speed up this process. Indeed, a group of theoretical physicists last year designed a quantum algorithm that solves this problem in logarithmic time rather than polynomial, a significant improvement.

Now, a Chinese team has successfully implemented this artificial intelligence algorithm on a working quantum computer, for the first time. The information processor is a standard nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer capable of handling 4 qubits. The team trained it to recognize the difference between the characters '6' and '9' and then asked it to classify a set of handwritten 6s and 9s accordingly, which it did successfully. The team says this is the first time that this kind of artificial intelligence has ever been demonstrated on a quantum computer and opens the way to the more rapid processing of other big data sets — provided, of course, that physicists can build more powerful quantum computers.

Comments

Re:There is no "working AI" at this time

[CaptainDork]

And it's a fucking misnomer.

Artificial implies not real and intelligence implies thinking.

Artificial intelligence is so unattainable that the original definition has evolved to something meaningless.

True artificial intelligence is when a computer becomes depressed because it lost its connection to Facebook.

Re:There is no "working AI" at this time

[Immerman]

>I have no idea of the formal definition of AI

You seem to be thinking of "Strong AI" - which is an actual thinking machine and the potentially immensely dangerous holy grail of AI research. All the various components - pattern recognition, descision-tree analysis, etc constitute Weak AI - basically everything that we can do on "autopilot" without conscious intervention.

And incidentally there's a growing body of evidence that our own brains may be composed of a large number of complexly interacting "weak intelligence" modules. For example theres a small area that appears to be dedicated just to face recognition - damage it and cognition is apparently unaffected but you can no longer recognize faces. Stimulate it and strangers faces seem to shift and look like someone you almost know.

Re:There is no "working AI" at this time

[Half-pint HAL]

But identifying the difference between a '6' and a '9'? I agree that this is 'AI' as much as me heating something in the microwave makes me a chef.

This isn't 'AI' as far as I'm concerned. It's neat, it's cool. But it aint AI.

You're forgetting one important factor: they did it in a quantum computer. Do you know how difficult those things are to build? Do you appreciate that this makes them expensive? And can you see how this would mean that all the quantum computers in existence are very very small in terms of component numbers compared to computers that work within the bounds of Newtonian physics?

The machine they used has 4 quantum bits. 4 quantum bits! That really is very little computing power. And with that they did a non-negligible task.

But the important thing isn't that this was a breakthrough in AI research, it was that quantum computing reduced the task from polynomial time to logarithmic. I think the summary calling this "a significant improvement" is a bit of an understatement.