Quantum supremacy?

A Wafer of the D-Wave Quantum Computer.
By Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA

We have been speaking about quantum computers for a few decades. These computers would work with qubits (quantum bits) instead of bits, and would perform certain operations much faster than ordinary computers.

It has been known since the thirties that quantum computers cannot solve problems that cannot be solved by ordinary computers. Those problems are called non-computable. What they would do, in principle, is solve certain problems (not all) much faster than ordinary computers. That higher speed, which in some cases should be enormous, is called quantum supremacy.

Let's give an example: we know that the decomposition of a composite number into its prime factors can be difficult. It’s trivial if the factors are small, but if the composite number is the result of multiplying two prime numbers of 100 digits each (for example) it is almost impossible to break it down, if we don’t know ay least one of the prime numbers.

The three laws of Robotics

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a prolific science fiction and popular science writer who published in the 40s a series of stories about robots, later compiled in the I, Robot collection. In these stories he invented a word that has become a part of the technological vocabulary, as the name of a discipline: Robotics. He also formulated the three famous laws of Robotics, which in his opinion should be implemented in every robot to make secure our interactions with these machines that, when Asimov formulated the laws, were simple future forecasts.

The three laws of Robotics are the following:

First Law: A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey any order given by a human being, except those that conflict with the first law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first two laws.

62 years later: scientific predictions by George Thomson

George Paget Thomson

In a previous post in this blog I expressed distrust about the predictions made by scientists and popular writers about the future of science and technology. Most of them never take place. Sometimes they are overly optimistic, sometimes overly pessimistic.

Sometimes, however,  they are true, if only in part. In 1955, George Paget Thomson (Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of electron diffraction) published a book about technological predictions (The Foreseeable Future, Cambridge University Press). I will summarize here the conclusions of his first chapter about the future of energy:

Until the population increase can be stopped, which is not foreseeable until 2050, energy consumption will continue to increase. Among the various sources, hydraulics will quickly reach its practical limits; coal and oil will be depleted sooner or later; solar energy is too dispersed and its use too expensive; wind and tidal power will never be major sources. The only alternative is nuclear energy: for the time being, fission energy, until fusion becomes possible.

This paragraph written 62 years ago could have been written today. In this field, progress has been very slow. In contrast, Thomson’s predictions about the evolution of transportation have been less accurate and can be summarized as follows:

Increasing the maximum speed of cars does not make sense. The maximum speed in railroads (100 miles per hour) has hardly grown in the last century and  is not expected to improve much. The only option to increase the speed of shipping would be by building large submarines powered by atomic energy, capable of moving at 60 or 70 knots. Major advances can only be envisaged in commercial air navigation, which will soon reach 2.5 times the speed of sound: crossing the Atlantic will take one hour.

Concorde

Thomson’s predictions for commercial air navigation have not been met. The only step in that direction, the Concorde, was a failure. The super-submarines have never come into existence. By contrast, railroads have more than doubled their top speed.

In biology, he correctly predicted the rise of biotechnology, genetics and the industrial use of microorganisms. In medicine, on the other hand, he expressed doubts about increasing the average duration of human life beyond 70 years (by 1955 it was 63) unless it were possible to eliminate death completely and maintain youth indefinitely. In his words:

This new state of affairs will profoundly alter man’s attitude toward death, perhaps not for his good. It will make him more cowardly, as he will have more to lose.

Thomson fails dramatically in his predictions about the future of computing. He believes that one can now say that computers do think (while they were in the first generation!), But the only future applications he envisages are the verification of scientific theories and performing economic and electoral predictions. As their publication can influence the result of what they predict, he assumes that these predictions and polls will be considered top secret by governments. In this way, according to Thomson, the use of computers will lead, in the long run, to less information dissemination. What has happened is exactly the opposite.

It is interesting to mention his predictions about the importance of scientific popularization, which compensates for the growing specialization in science and technology:

[Popularization] is not easy to do, and those who dedicate themselves to it deserve as high a place in scientific estimation as the researchers. Generally, those who are not specialists in a field are better able to explain to others.

The same post in Spanish
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Manuel Alfonseca