China bet big on quantum computing. Now the US races to keep up.

TU Curmudgeon said:

That and the fact that the economies which had previously competed with it had essentially been pounded into rubble by WWII.

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That's a good point.

And the problem with that (well, other than the blow to the ego) would be - what? [Please actually take a look at what the Chinese have actually been doing for the past several hundred years as well at the actual efforts that the Chinese have made to impose their system of government outside of the territory that the Chinese have claimed as their own for the past several hundred years (and dump the sloganeering) before answering? NOTE - If "Country A" does not insist that "Country B" run its internal affairs in exactly the same way as "Country A" does, what does it matter to the people of "Country B" how "Country A" runs its internal affairs?

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I was speaking to an American audience. As a Canadian I'm a little ambivalent, although if current American trends continue I will definitely be hoping China takes over the role as preeminent world superpower asap.

The problem with your statement is that the VP and others do NOT think that American students should waste time in science classes doing bible studies. What the VP and the others DO think is that it is only through the study of The Bible that the **T*R*U*T*H** can be discovered.

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Thank you for the clarification. In Canada this kind of thinking is really rare.

Again that is an inaccurate characterization, what they are being told is that BOTH "common sense" and "scientific research" that contradicts "The Bible" are not to be trusted because those are "The work of the Devil" and giving them any credence will result in you "suffering eternal damnation" so that means that they have a responsibility to "save the souls of America's children". It is only from this highest of moral motives that they are acting.

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And thanks again. But now I'm more afraid of these people. What behavior isn't acceptable if your god tells you you're acting by "highest of moral motives"? Taking part in a 9/11 becomes your moral duty.

And, in the opinions of some of the members of DP, that means that they are all doomed to spend the rest of eternity in Hell because they will not admit that **T*H*E** **T*R*U*T*H** is **T*H*E** **T*R*U*T*H**. After all, once you have found **T*H*E** **T*R*U*T*H** there is no point in looking further because anything else is FALSE and THE WORK OF THE DEVIL - right?

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Sigh.

TU Curmudgeon said:

Do I take it, then, that what people are calling "Quantum Computing" is actually "Sub-molecular Electronics"?

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"Quantum computing" is a pretty good term, as it relies on quantum effects, and you're still using molecules.

Although I'm pretty much a technobarbarian, I've long held that 90+% of all "improvements" in computers are totally indiscernible to 90+% of the people who actually use computers (for anything other than playing video games). Personally I am unable to tell if my computer completes a task in 0.001 seconds or in 0.00000000001 seconds. Can you?

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For some people, the improvements are irrelevant. In many respects though, we take the improvements for granted.

If all you do is answer emails and surf the web, almost any computer now will do the job. You could get a Chromebook for under $200 and do just fine. (Of course, the fact that such hardware can be had for less than $200 is part of the cycle of improvement.)

While that describes what most people do, there are still many fields that will take as much computing power as they can get -- architects, engineers, scientists, video editors, photographers, movie rendering, medical workers, and so on.

Similarly speaking, smartphones are significantly more powerful than the 1st generations. You can use a 2-3 year old smartphone without any problems, but the Palm Pilot doesn't even hold a candle to the iPhone X.

Plus, all sorts of web services (Netflix, online shopping, Spotify etc)) benefit from the improvements. The same goes for scientists and corporations that rely on massive computing resources. They probably won't benefit from QC, but they can use every bit of computing power they can get.

Possibly I'm oversimplifying your explanation, but the difference appears to be:

1. BINARY - "Yes" and "No";
2. QUANTUM - "Yes", "No", and "Maybe"

I can see where that might be of some use in some situations.

Would it be of any use to someone whose computer could just as well be running Windows 3.11? I doubt it.

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What I described is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway, quantum computers aren't designed for ordinary home or office use, they are highly specialized devices. They're supercomputers that require massive amounts of power and cooling; e.g. the D-Wave is cooled to 15 millikelvin, which is close to absolute zero. That's not going to fit under your desk any time soon...

As far as AI is concerned, I suspect that the main difficulty is going to be in getting a computer component that can assume a state on the "Worst", "Worse", "Not worse, but not neutral", "Neutral", "Not better, but not neutral", "Better", and "Best" scale (which is a reasonable analog to human thought processes).

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I don't really know, except that I assume that AI is one of the goals of developing neural networks.

At any rate, human intelligence operates radically differently than either binary or quantum computers.

Visbek said:

"Quantum computing" is a pretty good term, as it relies on quantum effects, and you're still using molecules.



For some people, the improvements are irrelevant. In many respects though, we take the improvements for granted.

If all you do is answer emails and surf the web, almost any computer now will do the job. You could get a Chromebook for under $200 and do just fine. (Of course, the fact that such hardware can be had for less than $200 is part of the cycle of improvement.)

While that describes what most people do, there are still many fields that will take as much computing power as they can get -- architects, engineers, scientists, video editors, photographers, movie rendering, medical workers, and so on.

Similarly speaking, smartphones are significantly more powerful than the 1st generations. You can use a 2-3 year old smartphone without any problems, but the Palm Pilot doesn't even hold a candle to the iPhone X.

Plus, all sorts of web services (Netflix, online shopping, Spotify etc)) benefit from the improvements. The same goes for scientists and corporations that rely on massive computing resources. They probably won't benefit from QC, but they can use every bit of computing power they can get.



What I described is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway, quantum computers aren't designed for ordinary home or office use, they are highly specialized devices. They're supercomputers that require massive amounts of power and cooling; e.g. the D-Wave is cooled to 15 millikelvin, which is close to absolute zero. That's not going to fit under your desk any time soon...



I don't really know, except that I assume that AI is one of the goals of developing neural networks.

At any rate, human intelligence operates radically differently than either binary or quantum computers.

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Has anyone ever developed a computer with multiple charge states or something similar? For instance instead of reading whether the transistor is on or off but reading on or off and what the voltage might be? Or using different frequencies of light on the same circuits.

JustHanging said:

And thanks again. But now I'm more afraid of these people. What behavior isn't acceptable if your god tells you you're acting by "highest of moral motives"? Taking part in a 9/11 becomes your moral duty.

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Exactly.

Except that it isn't "your God" it is "your leaders who purport to be relaying to you what 'your God' wants you to do".

Many of those who hold that Muslims do NOT "believe in the same God as Christians" like to overlook the fact that the Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet of God" and revere Him for that reason. This could not possibly be the case if Jesus was a prophet for some god other than the ones that the Muslim believe in when they say "There is but one God, and Allah is His name.".

If the two gods are the same god, then that god either wants the same thing or is schizophrenic because that god wants BOTH that the Chrisitans to kill all the Muslims and the Muslims to kill all the Christians.

Of course that would leave the field rather open for the Jews (whom, apparently, that god wants BOTH the Christians and Muslims to kill off).

Since, carrying that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, that means that that god wants everyone who believes in Him to be killed off.

Why?

I have no idea.

Maybe we should talk to the Sikhs and Hindus.

TU Curmudgeon said:

Welcome to the club.

PS - If you would like to bet that the US government is NOT sponsoring attempts at hacking into the Chinese computers in order to "obtain" the Chinese "intellectual property" I'll be more than happy to take your money.

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I think this is a safe assumption.

But since the evidence of Russian and Chinese cyberattacks upon the worlds private industries and governments are clear enough for public consumption, surely if the U.S. or other Western governments were practicing this in the same way then the evidence would be just as clear for public consumption.

MSgt said:

I think this is a safe assumption.

But since the evidence of Russian and Chinese cyberattacks upon the worlds private industries and governments are clear enough for public consumption, surely if the U.S. or other Western governments were practicing this in the same way then the evidence would be just as clear for public consumption.

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That would sort of depend on whether the Russian and/or Chinese governments want it to be.

The Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma had completely penetrated the CIA sponsored/supported Iraqi plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein and the first that the US government knew about it was when the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma telephoned the CIA (using CIA provided, encrypted, secure, cell phones) and told the CIA operative that the CIA might just as well stop monitoring their agents as the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma had just arrested all of them. The Iraqis were quite content to smear egg all over "Uncle Sam's" face privately and saw no profit in doing so publicly.

The CIA didn't make a big public announcement along the lines of "We were so incompetent that the Iraqis completely frustrated our illegal activities.".

Why?

Well, for one thing such an announcement doesn't actually guarantee you a bigger slice of the budget pie. For another, such an announcement tends to have a rather negative impact on the career progression of everyone involved.

TU Curmudgeon said:

That would sort of depend on whether the Russian and/or Chinese governments want it to be.

The Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma had completely penetrated the CIA sponsored/supported Iraqi plot to overthrow Saddam Hussein and the first that the US government knew about it was when the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma telephoned the CIA (using CIA provided, encrypted, secure, cell phones) and told the CIA operative that the CIA might just as well stop monitoring their agents as the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma had just arrested all of them. The Iraqis were quite content to smear egg all over "Uncle Sam's" face privately and saw no profit in doing so publicly.

The CIA didn't make a big public announcement along the lines of "We were so incompetent that the Iraqis completely frustrated our illegal activities.".

Why?

Well, for one thing such an announcement doesn't actually guarantee you a bigger slice of the budget pie. For another, such an announcement tends to have a rather negative impact on the career progression of everyone involved.

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Your example does not apply at all. The U.S. government has a history of meddling in foreign governments. You may as well have brought up a CIA-led coup as a comparison.

This is not what we are seeing with Russia and China, for which China fully acknowledged years ago. China and Russia use government assets to manipulate and steal from Western private businesses in order to feed their own state-owned businesses, which in turn get an edge on competition within the free-market based global system, which in turn sees obvious Russian and Chinese government state influence on foreign governments. This was the entire point behind TPP and TTIP as a response. This is a level of geoeconomics that they play, but the West largely does not. A just comparison would be to present a non-existent U.S.-owned Google and any cyberattacks and espionage that strengthens both.

MSgt said:

Your example does not apply at all. The U.S. government has a history of meddling in foreign governments. You may as well have brought up a CIA-led coup as a comparison.

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Even if the example doesn't apply, the reality is that we are only likely to learn what the Russians and Chinese are actually doing if the Russians and Chinese tell us.

MSgt said:

This is not what we are seeing with Russia and China, for which China fully acknowledged years ago. China and Russia use government assets to manipulate and steal from Western private businesses in order to feed their own state-owned businesses, which in turn get an edge on competition within the free-market based global system, which in turn sees obvious Russian and Chinese government state influence on foreign governments. This was the entire point behind TPP and TTIP as a response. This is a level of geoeconomics that they play, but the West largely does not. A just comparison would be to present a non-existent U.S.-owned Google and any cyberattacks and espionage that strengthens both.

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I wouldn't even think of disputing that the Russian and Chinese governments use their governmental power differently than the US government uses its governmental power.

The fact that the Russian and Chinese governments use their governmental power to bolster the Russian and Chinese economies, however, doesn't differ one whit from the fact that the American government uses its governmental power to bolster the American economy. In both cases the governments are attempting to increase their influence on foreign governments (for the betterment of their own economies).

Your comment regarding TPP and TTIP simply indicate that the Chinese are playing "best out of seven" while the US is playing "today's game". In the long run, the team that is playing the series tends to beat out the team that is only playing one game at a time.