Did you read about Google’s partnership with NASA and UCSD to build a quantum computer of 1000 qubits?
Technologically exciting, but … imagine a world without encryption. As if all locks and keys on all houses, cars, banks, nuclear vaults, whatever, disappeared, only incomparably more consequential.
That would be catastrophic, for business, economies, governments, individuals, every form of commerce, military communication....
Didn’t answer your question, I am sorry, but as a “fan” of quantum computing, and also a person with a long time interest in the quantum zeno effect, free will, and the implications for consciousness (as often discussed by Henry Stapp, among others), I am both excited, yet feel a certain trepidation. Like I do about nanotech.
I am writing a long essay and preparing a video on the topic, but it is a long way from completion. I do think it (qc) will have a dramatic effect on artifactual consciousness platforms, and I am even more certain that it will accellerate superintelligence (which is not at all the same thing, as intelligence and consciousness, in my opinion, are not coextensive.)
Did you read about Google’s partnership with NASA and UCSD to build a quantum computer of 1000 qubits?
Technologically exciting, but … imagine a world without encryption. As if all locks and keys on all houses, cars, banks, nuclear vaults, whatever, disappeared, only incomparably more consequential.
My understanding is that quantum computers are known to be able to break RSA and elliptic-curve-based public-key crypto systems. They are not known to be able to break arbitrary symmetric-key ciphers or hash functions. You can do a lot with symmetric-key systems—Kerberos doesn’t require public-key authentication. And you can sign things with Merkle signatures.
Thanks for pointing out the wiki article, which I had not seen. I actually feel a tiny bit relieved, but I still think there are a lot of very serious forks in the road that we should explore.
If we do not pre-engineer a soft landing, this is the first existential catastrophe that we should be working to avoid.
A world that suddenly loses encryption (or even faith in encryption!) would be roughly equivalent to a world without electricity.
I also worry about the legacy problem… all the critical documents in RSA, PGP, etc, sitting on hard drives, servers, CD roms, that suddenly are visible to anyone with access to the tech. How do we go about re-coding all those “eyes only” critical docs into a post-quantum coding system (assuming one is shown practical and reliable), without those documents being “looked at” or opportunistically copied in their limbo state between old and new encrypted status?
Who can we trust to do all this conversion, even given the new algorithms are developed?
This is actually almost intractably messy, at first glance.
I am writing a long essay and preparing a video on the topic, but it is a long way from completion. I do think it (qc) will have a dramatic effect on artifactual consciousness platforms
What do you mean with artificial consciousness to the extend that it’s not intelligence and why do you think the problem is in a form where quantum computers are helpful?
Which specific mathematical problems do you think are important for artificial consciousness that are better solved via quantum computers than our current computers?
What do you mean with artificial consciousness to the extend that it’s not intelligence and why do you think the problem is in a form where quantum computers are helpful?
The claim wasn’t that artifactual consciousness wasn’t (likely to be) sufficient for a kind of intelligence, but that they are not coextensive. It might have been clearer to say consciousness is (closer to being) sufficient for intelligence, than intelligence (the way computer scientists often use it) is to being a sufficient condition for consciousness (which is not at all.)
I needn’t have restricted the point to artifact-based consciousness, actually. Consider absence seizures (epilepsy) in neurology. A man can seize (lose “consciousness”) get up from his desk, get the car keys, drive to a mini-mart, buy a pack of cigarettes, make polite chat while he gets change from the clerk, drive home (obeying traffic signals), lock up his car, unlock and enter his house, and lay down for a nap, all in absence seizure state, and post-ictally, recall nothing. (Neurologists are confident these cases withstand all proposals to attribute postictal “amnesia” to memory failure. Indeed, seizures in susceptible patients can be induced, witnessed, EEGed, etc. from start to finish, by neurologists. )
Moral: intelligent behavior occurs, consciousness doesn’t. Thus, not coextensive. I have other arguments, also.
As to your second question, I’ll have to defer an answer for now, because it would be copiously long… though I will try to think of a reply (plus the idea is very complex and needs a little more polish, but I am convinced of its merit. I owe you a reply, though..., before we’re through with this forum.
I have dozens, some of them so good I have actually printed hardcopies of the PDFs—sometimes misplacing the DOIs in the process.
I will get some though; some of them are, I believe, required reading, for those of us looking at the human brain for lessons about the relationship between “consciousness” and other functions. I have a particularly interesting one (74 pages, but it’s a page turner) that I wll try to find the original computer record of. Found it and most of them on PubMed.
If we are in a different thread string in a couple days, I will flag you. I’d like to pick a couple of good ones, so it will take a little re-reading.
I think it is that kind of thing that we should start thinking about though. Its the consequences that we have to worry about as much as developing the tech. Too often times new things have been created and people have not been mindful of the consequences of their actions. I welcome the discussion.
Did you read about Google’s partnership with NASA and UCSD to build a quantum computer of 1000 qubits?
Technologically exciting, but … imagine a world without encryption. As if all locks and keys on all houses, cars, banks, nuclear vaults, whatever, disappeared, only incomparably more consequential.
That would be catastrophic, for business, economies, governments, individuals, every form of commerce, military communication....
Didn’t answer your question, I am sorry, but as a “fan” of quantum computing, and also a person with a long time interest in the quantum zeno effect, free will, and the implications for consciousness (as often discussed by Henry Stapp, among others), I am both excited, yet feel a certain trepidation. Like I do about nanotech.
I am writing a long essay and preparing a video on the topic, but it is a long way from completion. I do think it (qc) will have a dramatic effect on artifactual consciousness platforms, and I am even more certain that it will accellerate superintelligence (which is not at all the same thing, as intelligence and consciousness, in my opinion, are not coextensive.)
My understanding is that quantum computers are known to be able to break RSA and elliptic-curve-based public-key crypto systems. They are not known to be able to break arbitrary symmetric-key ciphers or hash functions. You can do a lot with symmetric-key systems—Kerberos doesn’t require public-key authentication. And you can sign things with Merkle signatures.
There are also a number of candidate public-key cryptosystems that are believed secure against quantum attacks.
So I think we shouldn’t be too apocalyptic here.
Asr,
Thanks for pointing out the wiki article, which I had not seen. I actually feel a tiny bit relieved, but I still think there are a lot of very serious forks in the road that we should explore.
If we do not pre-engineer a soft landing, this is the first existential catastrophe that we should be working to avoid.
A world that suddenly loses encryption (or even faith in encryption!) would be roughly equivalent to a world without electricity.
I also worry about the legacy problem… all the critical documents in RSA, PGP, etc, sitting on hard drives, servers, CD roms, that suddenly are visible to anyone with access to the tech. How do we go about re-coding all those “eyes only” critical docs into a post-quantum coding system (assuming one is shown practical and reliable), without those documents being “looked at” or opportunistically copied in their limbo state between old and new encrypted status?
Who can we trust to do all this conversion, even given the new algorithms are developed?
This is actually almost intractably messy, at first glance.
What do you mean with artificial consciousness to the extend that it’s not intelligence and why do you think the problem is in a form where quantum computers are helpful? Which specific mathematical problems do you think are important for artificial consciousness that are better solved via quantum computers than our current computers?
What do you mean with artificial consciousness to the extend that it’s not intelligence and why do you think the problem is in a form where quantum computers are helpful?
The claim wasn’t that artifactual consciousness wasn’t (likely to be) sufficient for a kind of intelligence, but that they are not coextensive. It might have been clearer to say consciousness is (closer to being) sufficient for intelligence, than intelligence (the way computer scientists often use it) is to being a sufficient condition for consciousness (which is not at all.)
I needn’t have restricted the point to artifact-based consciousness, actually. Consider absence seizures (epilepsy) in neurology. A man can seize (lose “consciousness”) get up from his desk, get the car keys, drive to a mini-mart, buy a pack of cigarettes, make polite chat while he gets change from the clerk, drive home (obeying traffic signals), lock up his car, unlock and enter his house, and lay down for a nap, all in absence seizure state, and post-ictally, recall nothing. (Neurologists are confident these cases withstand all proposals to attribute postictal “amnesia” to memory failure. Indeed, seizures in susceptible patients can be induced, witnessed, EEGed, etc. from start to finish, by neurologists. ) Moral: intelligent behavior occurs, consciousness doesn’t. Thus, not coextensive. I have other arguments, also.
As to your second question, I’ll have to defer an answer for now, because it would be copiously long… though I will try to think of a reply (plus the idea is very complex and needs a little more polish, but I am convinced of its merit. I owe you a reply, though..., before we’re through with this forum.
Is there an academic paper that makes that argument? If so, could you reference it?
I have dozens, some of them so good I have actually printed hardcopies of the PDFs—sometimes misplacing the DOIs in the process.
I will get some though; some of them are, I believe, required reading, for those of us looking at the human brain for lessons about the relationship between “consciousness” and other functions. I have a particularly interesting one (74 pages, but it’s a page turner) that I wll try to find the original computer record of. Found it and most of them on PubMed.
If we are in a different thread string in a couple days, I will flag you. I’d like to pick a couple of good ones, so it will take a little re-reading.
I think it is that kind of thing that we should start thinking about though. Its the consequences that we have to worry about as much as developing the tech. Too often times new things have been created and people have not been mindful of the consequences of their actions. I welcome the discussion.