Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

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Scott Aaronson has read the book and confirms that it’s every bit as awful as it seems. For a different look at out-of-control quantum […] This pretty conclusively shows that the explanation for the Kaku phenomenon is simply that he has no idea what he is talking about.

Kaku brushes this off. He points to the billions of dollars being poured into quantum research – “the Gold Rush is on” he says – and the way intelligence agencies have been warning about the need to get quantum-ready. That’s hardly proof positive they’ll live up to expectations – it could be tulip mania rather than a gold rush. He shrugs: “Life’s a gamble.” Silicon Valley could become a rust belt … a junkyard of chips that no one uses any more because they’re too primitiveHonestly, though, the errors aren’t the worst of it. The majority of the book is not even worth hunting for errors in, because fundamentally, it’s filler. The other thing that qubits can do is called entanglement. Normally, if you flip two coins, the result of one coin toss has no bearing on the result of the other one. They’re independent. In entanglement, two particles are linked together, even if they’re physically separate. If one comes up heads, the other one will also be heads. Expertly describes and rectifies common misconceptions about quantum computing—a technology regarded by experts as one that is likely to have profound societal implications. . . . Kaku deftly navigates the relevant scientific landscape. . . . Lucid. . . . Kaku excels at developing understandable metaphors for the complexities of quantum mechanics and computing. . . . Well written and accessible, offering readers a comprehensive overview of quantum computing, its underlying principles, and its potential.” — Science Quantum simulation speeding up progress in biochemistry, high-temperature superconductivity, and the like is at least plausible—though very far from guaranteed, since one has to beat the cleverest classical approaches that can be designed for the same problems (a point that Kaku nowhere grapples with). The runaway success of the microchip processor may be nearing its end, with profound implications for our economy, society and way of life, even leaving Silicon Valley as a new Rust Belt, its technology obsolete. Step forward the quantum computer, which harnesses the power and complexity of the atomic realm, and may be useful in solving humanity's greatest challenges from climate change, to global starvation, to incurable diseases. Humanity's next great technological achievement already promises to be every bit as revolutionary as the transistor and microchip once were. Its unprecedented gains in computing power and unique ability to simulate the physical universe herald advances that could change every aspect of our lives.

An exhilarating guide to the astonishing future of quantum computing, from the international bestselling physiciston Friday, May 19th, 2023 at 5:15 am and is filed under Quantum, Rage Against Doofosity, Speaking Truth to Parallelism. And if you think that a positive answer on a numerical experiment can never definitively tell you that this is what is going on in the physics world, then why did the Nobel committee give a prize to the discovery of the Hulse–Taylor pulsar system, where numerical calculations confirmed that it was losing energy because of gravitational waves. (For all we know, there might a different mechanism that just happens to have the same orbital decay parameters.)

Researchers have made great progress in developing the algorithms that quantum computers will use. But the devices themselves still need a lot more work. Knox #1: As a test, I tried asking GPT-4 to write a quantum computing explainer in the style of Michio Kaku, and it indeed generated similar prose with similar misconceptions. But then I asked it to write it in the style of Scott Aaronson and it did the same… 😀 This is a double howler: first, trial division takes only ~√N time; Kaku has confused N itself with its number of digits, ~log 2N. Second, he seems unaware that much better classical factoring algorithms, like the Number Field Sieve, have been known for decades, even though those algorithms play a central role in codebreaking and in any discussion of where the quantum/classical crossover might happen. In any case, for Kaku, knowledge is power. It’s part of the reason he’s moved from the lab to TV, radio and books. “The whole purpose of writing books for the public is so that [they] can make educated, reasonable, wise decisions about the future of technology. Once technology becomes so complicated that the average person cannot grasp it, then there’s big trouble, because then people with no moral compass will be in charge of the direction of that technology.” Not once in the book has Kaku even mentioned the intellectual tools (e.g., looking at actual quantum algorithms like Grover’s algorithm or phase estimation, and their performance on various tasks) that would be needed to distinguish 1 from 2.

This experiment certainly could possibly give a negative answer to the question: is the BFSS matrix model the same as one formulation of type IIA string theory. Negative answers can be valuable. I am just reading a book about Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative program. It is horrifying how far Edward Teller was able to convince the President, Congress, Pentagon and the public into his hare-brained visions ( “Brilliant Pebbles”, “Excalibur”, and so on). Pure monomaniacal intensity can bring in billions. A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting. His book about QFT isn’t half bad, it doesn’t add anything to the Weinberg or Zee but has a very interesting historical foray into simmetries and all the work in the post war era, citing the japanese effort that i knew nothing about.