Anything can be turned into a product. The appeal of chip-based technologies such as superconducting qbits or integrated photonics is that one could at least in theory scale them to orders of magnitude larger sizes. This is simply not possible with macroscopic mirrors and beam splitters on steel posts.
Obviously it won't go into your phone any time soon but as a specialised piece of hardware sold for +100k usd to universities and companies who can actually use it.
Fascinating. It seems the Chinese scientists achieved this Quantum Supremacy at normal room temperatures, and using standard industrial components used elsewhere in commercial telecom equipment.
At first, I thought this was more of a type of single-use quantum circuit, where you can only use it to solve this one problem. And you'd have to build a new rig to solve another function. And on and on, until you sorta get a general purpose super quantum computer, with all these individual rigs solving different functions, that can finally do useful work.
Whereas the Google Sycamore is more of a general purpose quantum computer that can be reprogrammed to solve anything.
But, this guy believes that this might be a first step to a universal photonic quantum computer.
The last part was incredible. They verified the results on a supercomputer, and went up to n=40. But the supercomputer time costed them $400,000. So they decided to stop there.
Public Key Crypto Code breaking, here we come. Setec Astronomy [1]
Most cryptographers think we will see RSA and EC type public key code breaking at least for small keys (<=1024 for RSA, <256 for EC) within 10-15 years. Once that happens we can more or less consider classical asymmetric crypto unsafe since we can assume deep-pocketed adversaries (NSA, FSB, China, etc.) may be ahead of what is publicly disclosed. That's why classically computable but quantum resistant asymmetric cryptography is one of the hottest areas of crypto research right now.
Does anyone really think the deep pockets of the TLAs haven't already done at least this well, especially with photonics at least? All the theoretical fundamentals have been known for decades. If COTS parts can do this then a focused research program begun decades ago will have already achieved what is public today. Public demonstration to me is just a proof-of-concept validating that state actors achieved parity with it quite a while ago.
If "Janik's black box" actually does exist, it would be among the deepest darkest secrets in the entire government. It would only be pulled out and used in extreme cases for fear of accidentally revealing evidence of its existence by breaking a code that one should not be able to break (similar to how the allies in WWII let the Germans sink a few ships rather than reveal that they could break German codes).
Their optical detectors are superconducting and a lot of the apparatus is temperature controlled. (doesn't really contradict your point, but I thought it was interesting to point out).
Just this week, China has achieved photonic quantum computing, planted a flag on the lunar surface, and fired up their "artificial sun" fusion tokamak ;)
I really appreciate this write by Scott Aaronson. It anticipates all possible inquiries. And is heavily grounded in CS Theory. The subtext of this open collaboration hints at universal cooperation and co-prosperity. But I fear the fallout may be closer to the "arms race" winner-take-all mentality!
I feel a bit embarrassed for asking, but can someone explain in layman's terms why the Gaussian boson sampling experiment proves quantum supremacy?
I believe my main confusion is why is this experiment being called a computation: to me this seems to be simply the observation of some physical phenomena which happens to be very hard to calculate with a classical computer.
I think here computation does not mean general programmability, rather just a single narrow problem. A classical computer running a predefined program would be hard to calculate on pen and paper, so there is silicon supremacy. Here finding the probability distribution of the outputs is hard classically, hence quantum supremacy.
> An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuously changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved. In contrast, digital computers represent varying quantities symbolically and by discrete values of both time and amplitude.
Yes but I don't understand how this can be seen as modelling anything but the experiment one is performing: the way I interpret this proof of quantum supremacy is (and again I know this is incorrect but don't know why) almost like selecting any physical phenomena to which a simulation of it is computationally hard, and then say that the result of this experiment is the returned value of a "computation". I feel it's almost like claiming you are going to simulate fluid dynamics with an actual water tank, some dye, and a camera.
I's really a bigger feat than what google achieved last year[1] and yet almost nobody will hear about it because google took all the hype. It's a pretty sad story actually.
[1]: the google achievement was designing a specific problem for which their quantum computer could perform better than classical computers. Now, this is a solution to a preexisting problem. Not to say that Google's result wasn't important, but this one is “one rank” higher.
Not necessarily true. Google's result used a programmable universal quantum computer for a specific task; the point of the experiment was not just to show that it can do this specific convoluted task faster than classical supercomputers, but also to show how powerful the quantum computer they've built is and how well they can control it. What they then did is go on a publish a dozen papers of running many other algorithms on it (of course, for those algorithms the quantum computer is not yet powerful enough to show advantage).
On the other hand, the device used in this experiment is a single-purpose non-universal sampler with very limited applications.
Yeah, google's computer is “more interesting” but wasn't able to outperform a classical computer on any known problem (hence not “quantum supreme”). Then they managed to design a problem, highly specific to their computer's design, that would be too hard to solve on a classical computer (hence “«quantum supreme»”).
On the scale :
0. Computer solves a specifically crafted problem < 1. computer solves one preexisting problem < 2. computer solves several existing problems < 3. computer solves all theoretically solvable problems.
Google's result is at 0, while this is a 1.
(By solve/theoretically solvable I mean: solve faster than a classical computer, and should be solvable faster with quantum than classical)
We hear about it here now, and it's a more recent achievement so of course it's bigger, it wouldn't be an achievement if it was smaller than the state of the art of a year ago
It's not just bigger, it's an order of magnitude bigger.
Actually, some people weren't totally convinced that Google's result really deserved the “quantum supremacy” label. Sure, the guys at IBM[1] were a bit bitter, but their argument make sense (and they weren't alone on that).
This result unambiguously deserve such qualification: this the kind of results everybody expected to be called “Quantum supremacy”, so that's a bit sad that they won't get as much credit as google's team.
What I like about quantum supremacy is that it finally lays to rest the layman theory that the world is a simulation, and that quantum effects are because of shortcuts and corner cutting.
No! Our world is harder to simulate than a classical one, which can only have classical computers.
Why do you think the simulators, if there be such, are limited to classical computers? Why do you think they have limits of any kind?
It is impossible in principle to have any evidence about simulationism. All knowledge about everything from logic up is from inside the simulation. Just accept that it's an epistemological tarpit and give up.
This form of world-as-simulation is effectively identical to strong theism. The world exists in the mind of God or runs on some supernatural "hardware" is basically the same thing as saying the world is a beyond-classical simulation.
I don't mean dismiss simulation, but I see now how it could be read that way. The key is the second part of the and-clause: quantum stuff being a side effect of a lazy simulator. That's what doesn't hold water.
To take this at face value -- the entire point of the quantum supremacy claim is not that these quantum computers are computing interesting problems that we can't solve with classical computers,
But instead what is being done is to construct a system where each of the components is simulateable on a classical computer -- we completely understand how they work. But when you put a number of the components together, the complexity of the classical program required to simulate the system becomes exponentially larger, rendering the classical simulating infeasible, while the complexity of the realized physical system increases only linearly.
Since molecules are a quantum computer in themselves, this would imply (if it were possible) that to simulate quantum effects on a classical computer for even a small number of molecules would require a quantum computer exponential in the number of molecules.
So to simulate one mole of air in its full complexity would require not just ~6e23 bits of computing power but instead 10^(10^23) bits of classical computing power.
By contrast, simulating a very long series of classical coupled pendulums, though very complex, is a problem that increases linearly (or sublinearly) with the number of pendulums. Even though this system has nonlinearities that make it nearly impossible to compute in closed form, and exhibit chaotic behavior, simulation can be done feasibly.
Sure I agree with all of that. But claiming that our reality became so much more complex that its not feasible to simulate it, therefore we are not living in a simulation is laughable.
If we hypothetically assume we are a program, there is nothing to derive about the stimulants their reality or/and capabilities.
They might be as well a 4D being running some tests. We might never know. maybe their physics is different then our who know.
Furthermore you do not need to simulate ever molecule in out universe. I am sure there would be optimizations of stuff that doesn't need to be simulated as its not observed.
Say up until recently a Pluto might needed less resources to simulate as it was never really seen, now it surface needs to be simulated etc. I am sure you get the point.
I myself am not really concerned about the simulation hypothesis and I think its less likely. A simulation needs to be useful and if we were to run our simulation and start a possible chain then the cost of running the whole thing is felt the most at the actual real universe. If the cost is too high (ie time resolution is too slow for the liking of the owners) it will be terminated or rebooted.
So if we are in simulation then not starting a simulation would be the wisest choice to prolong our existence.
Either way its just an idle friday chitchat with no way to check or prove anything :)
The more interesting question may be what innovation was achieved in performing the experiment, mainly I assume, in controlling and measuring the large number of photons accurately. Hints on those seem to be Fig. 2 [1].
In the spirit of sensationalizing "China" and "supremacy", does anyone know if this technology is relevant to some Star Wars weaponry for example?
It's not control of individuals photons (that would be boson sampling), but gaussian pulses. Still a tour-de-force of a demonstration, but actual practical implications are very limited.
> When I refereed the Science paper, I asked why the authors directly verified the results of their experiment only for up to 26-30 photons, relying on plausible extrapolations beyond that. While directly verifying the results of n-photon BosonSampling takes ~2n time for any known classical algorithm, I said, surely it should be possible with existing computers to go up to n=40 or n=50? A couple weeks later, the authors responded, saying that they’d now verified their results up to n=40, but it burned $400,000 worth of supercomputer time so they decided to stop there. This was by far the most expensive referee report I ever wrote!
> Also: when Covid first started, and facemasks were plentiful in China but almost impossible to get in the US, Chaoyang Lu, one of the authors of the new work and my sometime correspondent on the theory of BosonSampling, decided to mail me a box of 200 masks (I didn’t ask for it). I don’t think that influenced my later review, but was appreciated nonetheless.
> facemasks were plentiful in China but almost impossible to get in the US
That wasn't a coincidence.
> Just after the lockdown of Wuhan in January, the same week the U.S. confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus, Chinese civic organizations in dozens of countries on five continents began buying masks and other personal protective equipment.
> In Nagoya, Japan, volunteers drove to pharmacies and bought 520,000 masks in three days, according to an account carried by Xinhua, China’s official news agency. By Jan. 26, the head of a Chinese chamber of commerce in Toronto, just back from a trip to Beijing, started making calls to members telling them they needed to join the effort, the report said. Almost 100 people drove to Toronto—some overnight, on icy roads—and were dispatched to buy supplies. Planes out of Kenya and Milan were packed with boxes and suitcases filled with PPE bound for China. An overseas Chinese association in Argentina sent some 25,000 masks within a week of receiving the request.
Various groups donated masks to China in January, what's your point?
Outside of China, nobody was talking about needing masks until March. I'm pretty sure the author is talking about the fact that by March, China had already produced tons of new masks but average people in the US couldn't access them because they were being reserved for health care workers.
In Nagoya, Japan, volunteers drove to pharmacies and bought 520,000 masks in three days,
Seems like it was a global phenomenon. There were articles in the local newspapers where I live (US) interviewing Chinese expats who were buying all the PPE they could find and shipping them home.
While it put other countries in a bad position, I think it was probably a perfectly normal thing for an expat to do since people didn't know how bad it would get outside of China at the time. Most times there is a disaster somewhere in the world, the people from that country who live elsewhere try to help.
I've noticed that folks even hinting at the fact that China could be doing something unethical in a given situation will often get quickly downvoted on HN.
Why are we claiming this was achieved by "China" rather than the responsible scientists? Science is a global cooperative effort, rather than a national competition. Also, link to the actual article:
A Chinese citizen, who happens to be the Vice Chair of a Chinese political party, working for the University of Science and Technology of China, using money entirely from the Chinese government, led a team consisting entirely of other Chinese citizens working for Chinese institutions, and you're wondering why we're claiming this was achieved by "China"?
Science might be a global cooperative effort, but this paper comes from China.
One of the things that is interesting about the Chinese political system is the large number of engineers and scientists who also have high political positions.
Maybe it is a sign of a society still focused on building stuff rather than redistributing and administrating what is already there.
For roughly the same reason that the first example of quantum supremacy we attribute to Google rather than individual scientists. I actually know the names of the Chinese responsible, I couldn't tell you the names of anyone on the Google team.
I also wonder how the Google result was reported in China. I wouldn't be surprised if it was reported as "Americans have done X".
The US always has to propagandize news from China since they are an economic rival. Did they run the headline “America achieves quantum supremacy” when Google supposedly achieved quantum supremacy? Nope.
Objection is common when the US is used to represent its accomplishments. The objectors usually counter that it's a win for humanity, as a way to debase something positive for the US. Happens in every major thread on HN that involves the US doing something great.
See: every significant accomplishment by SpaceX or NASA for a repeating case.
If you really want to see objectors get triggered, check out the past threads that tangent off about SpaceX employees chanting USA USA USA on video, that's always quite amusing.
> Science is a global cooperative effort, rather than a national competition.
Haha... that's not at all the case; academics are petty people with fragile egos who are often under the thumb of lab directors with even worse egos and often come into that role with an ax to grind. Racism, be it veiled or otherwise, is also no stranger to the realms of Science. Much less the dregs called the peer-reviewed system. Consider the plight of Dr. He Jiankui who many researchers in the West lauded in private, but scorned in public when the 'evil Chinese Scientist' revealed his results to the Public because grant money and political standing were at risk.
Collaborations are limited in so far as their personal utility for more grants or prestige, lets not elevate researchers and their horrible practices to places they do not belong.
I think you would find the process entirely sad and depressing, as most of us did in our undergrad, when you see it for what it really is.
>who many researchers in the West lauded in private
I've only heard universal condemnation from scientists, where can I learn more about this private support for him? Or am I going to take your word for it?
Not necessary, but I'm just going to assume you aren't a biologist nor do you follow the Bio-hacker culture, right?
Start with Josiah Zayner's talks from the time of that event. I think it was in the conference ahead of the trailer release of 'Code of the Wild' that stands out. But he's on record talking about it as well, I think Dr. Church also touched on it as well. The Bio Hack the Planet conference talks might also have more details, as I recall him talking about the events leading up to Dr. Doudna's misplaced/misunderstood role in CRISPR that eventually got her a Nobel Prize and it segued into that discussion, too.
Back on PC Edit: This piece [0] is also worth a read, here is an excerpt from Science:
> Yet opposition was not unanimous. A few months before He met the couples, a committee convened by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) concluded in a well-publicized report that human trials of germline editing "might be permitted" if strict criteria were met. The group of scientists, lawyers, bioethicists, and patient advocates spelled out a regulatory framework but cautioned that "these criteria are necessarily vague" because various societies, caregivers, and patients would view them differently. The committee notably did not call for an international ban, arguing instead for governmental regulation as each country deemed appropriate and "voluntary self-regulation pursuant to professional guidelines."
>> That circle included leading scientists—among them a Nobel laureate—in China and the United States, business executives, an entrepreneur connected to venture capitalists, authors of the NASEM report, a controversial U.S. IVF specialist who discussed opening a gene-editing clinic with He, and at least one Chinese politician. "He had an awful lot of company to be called a ‘rogue,’" says geneticist George Church, a CRISPR pioneer at Harvard University who was not in the circle of trust and is one of the few scientists to defend at least some aspects of He's experiment.
The questionable stance, and reluctance comes when academic researchers know that their grants and good standing with a chosen University (and the prestige and clout they garner) comes under threat. Maybe its because I've seen this kind of thing play out in real time when I was in School and then entered the Industry that I'm not all surprised by it... but it's also a sense of remorse mixed with dread and despair as a person who was on track to be a lab Clinical Lab Scientist but what disgusted at what 'really happens' internally that shaped my view(s) and made me leave the Industry entirely.
I guess "China" triggers Americans with negative sentiments with as the media always does with us v. them cold war mentality, which gets more clicks. May I ask what alternative title do you suggest, to name the individuals?
The US oppresses and murders differently (though you could look to Cuba and say with gusto "this is a crime and needs to get someone in front of the international tribunal") than China. For examples of the US being an absolute ass, you may for example look towards the middle east. Or I suppose right next door, to south america.
Edit: Note that these are enormous swathes of land where the US has been perpetrating war crimes for so long most people living there don't even remember differently anymore.
Edit: it looks like you've been using this account primarily for political battle. That's one of the criteria we use for banning accounts, as I've explained here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... If you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to them from now on, we'd appreciate it.
"a country that has explicitly set out to usurp the US is useful"
Can you provide some evidence for saying that China "explicitly" set out to do this? The Chinese government has been consistently "explicit" that it does not aim to replace or supplant the US [1][2][3]. Perhaps you mean "actions speak louder than words" and that this intention is evident from the actions they've undertaken, in which case it would be nice to know what actions you have in mind, as well as how you ruled out boring explanations of those actions that China's leaders would have given themselves.
To be fair that document number 9 doesn't really shows me anything special.
A observable person might see how the west do exactly that same by containing Chinese influences in the anglo-sphere.
You had pompeo calling for a Clean network initiative(potential for western variant of the Great fire wall) banning hardware from "outsiders".
Then you have the formation of the Democracies-10 group you would almost say a modern rendition of the eight nation alliance.
But yeah lets be honest China will usurp the US in Asia, and most probably in central and west Asia with the help from Russia and Iran.
Its kinda hard to hide your strength and bide your time when your building multiple carrier fleets, Can't really unsee that.
Its not for Taiwan to say its a sovereign state, nobody maybe except some in the Anglo-sphere will risk their trade relations with China.
If that is possible for region to proclaim itself as a sovereign state, it will unleash some chaos in the west giving precedence for Scotland, Catalonia,
the donbas region etc to also seperate from their current configuration.
1. The document you linked to is about domestic, not foreign policy. If that isn't clear from the nature of the document itself, see in particular these quotes:
> The document is critical of "extremely malicious" ideals spreading in the Chinese society, such as ideas of (Western) constitutional democracy, civil society, universal values (freedom, democracy, and human rights), neo-liberalism, and freedom of the press (described as the "Western news values").[1][2][13] The document warns that such subjects undermine the Chinese Communist Party's control over Chinese society.[2]
> According to news analysis by a reporter at The New York Times, the emphasis on political discipline is intended to forestall leftist, or Maoist, opposition to needed economic reforms avoiding the split which resulted in the Soviet Union during Gorbachev's reform efforts when media freedom resulted in publishing of a great deal of critical historical material and alienation of the mass of party workers.[7]
The document shows that China's leaders were worried that the spread of western values within Chinese society could turn China into the next Soviet Union and were acting to prevent that from happening. I don't see how this could be read as proving any claim about their foreign policy aims, much less the extremely strong claim that China aims to usurp or replace the US.
2. I agree Taiwan "feels that way [i.e. like a sovereign country]": they have their own elections, passports, currency, … But I'm not seeing how the question about Taiwan bears on the claim (to the extent that clear empirical meaning can be attached to it) that China "explicitly set out" to usurp US's place.
Any time, any one who brings up their nation as being the best - I've got no room for you in my life. I despise nationalism and national pride in all forms. It only breeds hatred and unproductive relationships, and creates echo chambers. This goes for all countries.
We're tiny blobs of muttering meat in the universe. Temporarily here.
To just throw out the evolutionary workings of not only humans, but many of our animal ancestors is extremely naive.
You are suggesting you know better than a system that millions of years of evolution have created. You are also assuming that you know all the risks of NOT organising in tribes, that somehow if all humans were some untribal lonely individual entities, the world would work better. Many many billions of people and animals seem to disagree.
We know better than evolution all the time. Else: No medicine, no operations, no science (random list of things, more can be added). Doesn't sound like a very good world to me.
If we know better than evolution then why are most people unhappy? Because we've created environments unlike those we evolved in. We live lives at odds with our evolutionary instincts.
Fair enough. Well, the birth rate in developed countries is decreasing.
In any case, I think we have managed the counter the forces of natural selection that affect our physical health, but not those that affect our mental health.
All of these thing you mention are simply attempts to attenuate evolution, not conquer it. Moreover, all of the things you mention are a new feature set developed from evidence given to us by evolution.
Evolution is already conquered. Done. Defeated. We've left it behind when we invented language and writing.
About the only area where biological evolution is relevant now is pathogens, because these evolve on timescales comparable to technological development of humans.
Humans managed to create a means to communicate with each other. End of evolution right there. We figured out germ theory and then vaccines. The DEATH of human evolution. We have the Internet now so that must mean human evolution just stops, because integrated circuits or something.
We look back on proto-humans, who had many tools, with the same arrogance. There’s no reason our species won’t evolve further to look back on the “internet” and laugh.
Yup, it's all about timescales. Fact: in large animals like humans, with long lifespans and low reproduction rates, evolution takes thousands of years to fixate any change in the population. That's about the time human civilization existed. In those few thousand years, we went from primitive tools to germ theory, vaccines, rocketry, etc. (and most of interesting developments happened in the last few hundred years; we're riding an exponent here).
Evolution for humans just doesn't matter, because at this point, we're doing meaningful changes to ourselves and our environment at a rate faster than it takes for a human to reach reproductive age. We didn't wait for evolution to adapt us to colder climate, fix our eyesight or change melanin levels; we just developed clothes, glasses and sunscreen - which also made these features not influenceable by natural selection pressures. And whatever mutation happens that doesn't kill a person, we work around it socially or technologically - which means its impact on reproductive fitness is usually close to zero. Biological evolution is no longer the force driving the shape of our species.
There is an evolution of humans happening, but it's social and technological, not biological.
You're missing the point though. Your built in emotions, hormones, drives, are still from your evolution. Yes, forwards humans might not evolve biologically. But you still evolved from systems dating hundreds of millions of years back.
You simply can't just say these don't matter any more, because it's ignoring reality. Every time you're turned on by someone attractive, its evolution thats doing that. And good luck thinking rationally when you are truly in love. (or to take a different example, when your body has a temperature in reaction to a disease. Good luck overriding your absolutely terrible mental state with rational human thought).
That's not at all what I'm suggesting. My point is merely that you cannot derive an ought from an is. (I suspect most of us agree about what is, but we probably agree a lot less about what ought to be.)
I'm suggesting that it might be wise to try to keep our baser instincts at bay -- as well as we can, at least. Sure, we'll fail from time to time (or often even), but that doesn't mean we should give up that struggle.
Quite incredible! And for anyone who's worked in optics or photonics, a real experimental feat. (just look at that table!)