Offhand, I would expect analog quantum simulators to come before digital quantum computers, given how they are already naturally everywhere, anyway, just not in a well-controlled way. Sort of like birds were a living proof that “heavier-than-air flying machines” are possible. This year-old Nature review seems to show a number of promising directions.
How did natural selection solve this problem without quantum computers or even intelligence, and why can’t an AI exploit the same regularity even faster?
Anything that makes the Schrodinger equation tractable would make me much less confident of my analysis.
Offhand, I would expect analog quantum simulators to come before digital quantum computers, given how they are already naturally everywhere, anyway, just not in a well-controlled way. Sort of like birds were a living proof that “heavier-than-air flying machines” are possible. This year-old Nature review seems to show a number of promising directions.
How did natural selection solve this problem without quantum computers or even intelligence, and why can’t an AI exploit the same regularity even faster?
Natural selection used trial and error. An AI would do that faster and with fewer errors.