Suitably Flip

Everyone Brace For... Well, Something (Maybe)

Futurists like to talk of the possibility of a technological "singularity", a point in time at which the exponential pace of technological progress reaches a vertical asymptote and goes infinite.  It does sound like hoot, except that by definition, all conceivable advancements would take place instantaneously, so there's no useful way to predict what happens on the other side.  In all likelihood, something involving superhuman intelligences and one of any number of scenarios that involve human extinction.

Singularitarians suspect the blessed/cursed event will be brought about by the development of either strong artificial intelligence or molecular nanotechnology.  The AI buffs believe it's the nanogeeks that will unmake the world and that it's therefore up to them to beat them to the punch, in order to arm humanity with sufficiently advanced defensive technology.  And vice versa, of course.  Many of these folks predict we've got about 20-40 years until we hit the singularity, based on the fairly parallel pace of progress in the two fields.

One variable that's keeping humanity's end game down the road a piece is the acceleration of computing power.  AI and nanotech are both hamstrung by Moore's Law's lazy computational doublings ever year or two.  (Incidentally, Moore himself predicted that his own law, like any theory of exponential growth, is not indefinitely sustainable and would eventually collapse as it grew larger, which tends to somewhat poop the singularity party and their expectation of infinite, instantaneous progress.)

Anyway, Moore's thus-far-holding prediction of the trajectory of computational power (easily surpassing his original horizon of 1975) has allowed and should continue to allow increasingly stunning technological advances, at least for a while.  But even if the current pace holds, the technorapture still belongs to the next generation.

As it happens, yesterday, in what I'm fairly confident was my first post ever to mention quantum computing, I wrote about a Harvard professor who has managed to tame and manipulate the speed of light, a bit of technology that may come in handy in the development of quantum computing.  Quantum computing, so far as I can tell, is the study of magic, in which bits are replaced by qubits, which have no definite values like normal God-fearing bits, but rather have various probabilities associated with their values.  By spanning many parallel realities, they enable processors to make many simultaneous calculations and - should we ever manage to put them into practical use - promise to throw a little jet fuel on Moore's Law.

Quantum computing would accelerate the development of strong AI and molecular nanotech significantly, hurtling us ever more inescapably toward our very fascinating doom.  But practical deployment of this technology also looks to be about 20 years off, meaning you can continue to consider timeshare purchases, breed, invest in LEAPs, and make other long-term decisions confident that the world will still be here for at least another couple decades.

Or so we thought.  If you've made it this far down the post, kudos.  You now have the proper context to contemplate this ominous headline:  Quantum computer to debut next week.

As a wise man once said: Oh, boy.

Twenty years before most scientists expected it ... D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel "universes"), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach.

D-Wave is the world's only "commercial" quantum computing company, backed by more than $20 million of venture capital (there are more commercial ventures in the related field of quantum cryptography).
...
It has been predicted that quantum computing will make current computer security obsolete, cracking any current cryptography scheme by providing an unlimited amount of simultaneous processing resources. Multiple quantum states exist at the same time, so every quantum bit or "qubit" in such a machine is simultaneously 0 and 1. D-Wave's prototype has only 16 qubits, but systems with hundreds of qubits would be able to process more inputs than there are atoms in the universe.

In a word: REPENT!

Despite our assured annihilation as a species, the "wait-and-see" approach taken by the academic community seems well-advised.  Gizmodo weighs in on the "strange-but-maybe-true" development (and also has some nifty pictures of D-Wave's spiraly golden components).

As skeptical scientists the world over scratch their heads (and some roll their eyes), the British Columbian D-Wave vows to prove naysayers wrong at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California next week, firing up this box that's somehow able to contain multiple quantum states that exist at the same time. ... This is either going to be a breakthrough or the company's sugar daddies will be wanting their $20 million back post haste.

If I were a betting man, my money would be on the latter.  But if I'm wrong, hopefully D-Wave (and our forthcoming silicon overlords) will give me partial credit - in the spirit of qubits - for acknolwedging the possibility of it being true...

Hmm, yep, that was a quantum computing joke.

The next post will be involve chimps and/or fart jokes, I promise.

Comments

Everyone Brace For... Well, Something (Maybe)

Futurists like to talk of the possibility of a technological "singularity", a point in time at which the exponential pace of technological progress reaches a vertical asymptote and goes infinite.  It does sound like hoot, except that by definition, all conceivable advancements would take place instantaneously, so there's no useful way to predict what happens on the other side.  In all likelihood, something involving superhuman intelligences and one of any number of scenarios that involve human extinction.

Singularitarians suspect the blessed/cursed event will be brought about by the development of either strong artificial intelligence or molecular nanotechnology.  The AI buffs believe it's the nanogeeks that will unmake the world and that it's therefore up to them to beat them to the punch, in order to arm humanity with sufficiently advanced defensive technology.  And vice versa, of course.  Many of these folks predict we've got about 20-40 years until we hit the singularity, based on the fairly parallel pace of progress in the two fields.

One variable that's keeping humanity's end game down the road a piece is the acceleration of computing power.  AI and nanotech are both hamstrung by Moore's Law's lazy computational doublings ever year or two.  (Incidentally, Moore himself predicted that his own law, like any theory of exponential growth, is not indefinitely sustainable and would eventually collapse as it grew larger, which tends to somewhat poop the singularity party and their expectation of infinite, instantaneous progress.)

Anyway, Moore's thus-far-holding prediction of the trajectory of computational power (easily surpassing his original horizon of 1975) has allowed and should continue to allow increasingly stunning technological advances, at least for a while.  But even if the current pace holds, the technorapture still belongs to the next generation.

As it happens, yesterday, in what I'm fairly confident was my first post ever to mention quantum computing, I wrote about a Harvard professor who has managed to tame and manipulate the speed of light, a bit of technology that may come in handy in the development of quantum computing.  Quantum computing, so far as I can tell, is the study of magic, in which bits are replaced by qubits, which have no definite values like normal God-fearing bits, but rather have various probabilities associated with their values.  By spanning many parallel realities, they enable processors to make many simultaneous calculations and - should we ever manage to put them into practical use - promise to throw a little jet fuel on Moore's Law.

Quantum computing would accelerate the development of strong AI and molecular nanotech significantly, hurtling us ever more inescapably toward our very fascinating doom.  But practical deployment of this technology also looks to be about 20 years off, meaning you can continue to consider timeshare purchases, breed, invest in LEAPs, and make other long-term decisions confident that the world will still be here for at least another couple decades.

Or so we thought.  If you've made it this far down the post, kudos.  You now have the proper context to contemplate this ominous headline:  Quantum computer to debut next week.

As a wise man once said: Oh, boy.

Twenty years before most scientists expected it ... D-Wave of British Columbia has promised to demonstrate a quantum computer next Tuesday, that can carry out 64,000 calculations simultaneously (in parallel "universes"), thanks to a new technique which rethinks the already-uncanny world of quantum computing. But the academic world is taking a wait-and-see approach.

D-Wave is the world's only "commercial" quantum computing company, backed by more than $20 million of venture capital (there are more commercial ventures in the related field of quantum cryptography).
...
It has been predicted that quantum computing will make current computer security obsolete, cracking any current cryptography scheme by providing an unlimited amount of simultaneous processing resources. Multiple quantum states exist at the same time, so every quantum bit or "qubit" in such a machine is simultaneously 0 and 1. D-Wave's prototype has only 16 qubits, but systems with hundreds of qubits would be able to process more inputs than there are atoms in the universe.

In a word: REPENT!

Despite our assured annihilation as a species, the "wait-and-see" approach taken by the academic community seems well-advised.  Gizmodo weighs in on the "strange-but-maybe-true" development (and also has some nifty pictures of D-Wave's spiraly golden components).

As skeptical scientists the world over scratch their heads (and some roll their eyes), the British Columbian D-Wave vows to prove naysayers wrong at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California next week, firing up this box that's somehow able to contain multiple quantum states that exist at the same time. ... This is either going to be a breakthrough or the company's sugar daddies will be wanting their $20 million back post haste.

If I were a betting man, my money would be on the latter.  But if I'm wrong, hopefully D-Wave (and our forthcoming silicon overlords) will give me partial credit - in the spirit of qubits - for acknolwedging the possibility of it being true...

Hmm, yep, that was a quantum computing joke.

The next post will be involve chimps and/or fart jokes, I promise.