Google Says Its New Quantum Chip Indicates That Multiple Universes Exist (techcrunch.com) 114
Tucked away in a blog post about Google's quantum computing chip, Willow, Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote that the chip was so "mind-boggling" fast that it seemed to borrow computational power from other universes. According to Neven, the chip's performance suggests the existence of parallel universes, writing, "We live in a multiverse." TechCrunch reports: Here's the passage: "Willow's performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."
This drop-the-mic moment on the nature of reality was met with skepticism by some, but, surprisingly, others on the internet who profess to understand these things argued that Nevan's conclusions were more than plausible. The multiverse, while stuff of science fiction, is also an area of serious study by the founders of quantum physics. The skeptics, however, point out that the performance claims are based on the benchmark that Google itself created some years ago to measure quantum performance. That alone doesn't prove that parallel versions of you aren't running around in other universes -- just where the underlying measuring stick came from.
This drop-the-mic moment on the nature of reality was met with skepticism by some, but, surprisingly, others on the internet who profess to understand these things argued that Nevan's conclusions were more than plausible. The multiverse, while stuff of science fiction, is also an area of serious study by the founders of quantum physics. The skeptics, however, point out that the performance claims are based on the benchmark that Google itself created some years ago to measure quantum performance. That alone doesn't prove that parallel versions of you aren't running around in other universes -- just where the underlying measuring stick came from.
Uh oh (Score:3)
The multiverse might want it's computational power back.
Re: Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
The apostropheverse wants its superfluous apostrophe back. It's means "it is".
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Sorry, that was autocomplete.
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No, it was lack of attention on your part. Now that we know how important your posts are to you, we're more able to decide how best to spend our precious mod points.
You're missing my point, I know. but this entire post, and the article that inspired it, are such rich fiction I'm amazed they aren't a lead on MSNBC.
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It's Slashdot's fault for not having an EditVerse.
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Hmmm. The citations say that a Google spokesperson, observing a Google benchmark through a Google processor was so incredible that many zeros were needed to demonstrate the result.
Let's see if a third party, using a demonstrably repetitive and reliable rubric, is suddenly aided by a multiverse output.
It will be a SHTF moment for Google, deflating many, many zeroes.
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Google is mostly zeros these days, obviously putting some in a press-release is easy to do.
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Or at least to stop mining Bitcoin on their PCs.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Interesting)
Or at least to stop mining Bitcoin on their PCs.
A processor approaching this power should be able to break Bitcoin, putting a sudden end to this pestilence. As a bonus, most of the world's bad guys will be out huge sums of money.
Re: Uh oh (Score:3)
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Hahahaha, no. That benchmark is not any indication of real power. It is a meaningless stunt. What you do is essentially have the "QC" just do some quantum effects that accomplish nothing of value and then have a regular computer (simulate that. Yes, there is a rather drastic difference in real-world effort needed. The result is completely meaningless nonetheless. If that QC were require to simulate said regular computer (i.e. an actual comparison was attempted), it could not even do it.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand how you dont get the concept that "bad guys" are simply people that do bad things. It's a subjective term of course but for instance most would call a group like ISIS "bad guys" and that would make a lot of sense if you happen to be of the opinion that killing people for not believing in your god, being gay or for any number of other reasons is bad.
Re:Uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a moral generalization in a single term. I'm sorry it triggers you but there's nothing wrong with it.
Anyway. How could you possibly think I didn't understand the definition of "bad guy" ???
Because I thought you might not be being ridiculous and was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
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It's a term for little children.
You sound deeply insecure.
My point was that it's a childish, borderline useless, term
Seems perfectly serviceable term to me ... and everyone else with an IQ above room temperature. Are you sure you know what it means?
Anyway. How could you possibly think I didn't understand the definition of "bad guy" ???
Because of your bizarre response to it.
Here's a clue for you, child:
Bitcoin is primarily used by people doing illegal things. Scammers, drug lords, terrorists, child pornographers, etc. Those are the bad guys. This isn't complicated or confusing.
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I imagine that the conductors of the simulation wonder what novel uses these little sentient agents are creating with their photons and electrons.
Also, the multiverse is just an side-effect of the parallelized nature of said simulation (they have to re-use the same particle in different cases).
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Not this simulation bullshit again. That is a mathematical representation from anit-De Sitter space, which as a negative, constant curvature. We live in something like a DeSitter space with a positive curvature and may be not constant. Anti-De Sitter has a boundary which can encode the interior. De Sitter has no boundary upon which the encoding can occur. And if we were to live in anti-De Sitter space, there is no Holy Laser that can project the boundary onto the interior.
And the boundary in anti-De Sitter
Re: Uh oh (Score:2)
Re:multiverses want power back (Score:1)
They punished us by sending an orange demagogue.
The F are you smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where have I heard that one before?
Re:The F are you smoking? (Score:4, Interesting)
"X did something faster than before, and is within expectations of X's capabilities, so Y must have been involved and therefore exists!"
Where have I heard that one before?
Maybe, but there is support from many in the scientific community for their findings. If it was a complete crackpot idea no one would be supporting further testing.
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Maybe, but there is support from many in the scientific community for their findings. If it was a complete crackpot idea no one would be supporting further testing.
Have you paid any attention at all to the world in 2024?
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My thought precisely. I'm with Sabine Hossenfelder in saying academia and science are close to jumping off a cliff and good riddance to bad rubbish.
We need a renaissance in this area because right now I'm at a point of distrust where I'd want to shake my other-dimensionly doppelganger's hand before I believe anything about multiverses.
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The story I heard 3-4 years ago was if you asked a physicist working on quantum computing what is actually happening when you turn on the system, you'd get one of two answers:
1) Each time we turn it on, for every qubit in the system, an entire universe identical to ours is created with its own quantum computer working on the problem. Once one of the computers in this "network" of universes comes up with the answer, it disseminates that answer to the other computers in the other universes.
2) I don't want to
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As this is rather obvious nonsense, what is actually happening is that QCs simply demonstrate that the models are crap. The ones that give answer (2) know that and are unwilling to lie.
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Somewhere along the line the purveyor's of woo decided quantum mechanics was a gold mine. What you heard is pretty silly.
Quantum mechanics is fundamentally a bunch of math that works. Monkey brains like analogies so interpretations of what it actually "means" came later, and some of them had to get pretty wild to protect our cherished opinions about what reality is. One of those interpretations is called "Many Worlds" and is based on the observation that you can integrate over all the possible paths a proce
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There's no more universes in the Many Worlds model than in classical QM. Both are just ways to explain superposition and entanglement. In the Cophenhagen model the wavefunction collapses when measured (whatever the hell a measurement is). In the Many Worlds model you become entangled with the measurement, resulting in a superposition of yourself having measured each of the results (we're all quantum computers). Yet another model has retrocausation (aka time travel).
All this weirdness is because we don't hav
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There is a lot of money to be made, even if there never will be a product. Without that, the whole stupid QC idea would have died a few decades ago.
Physics and Fairy Tales (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a "drop the mic" moment on the nature of reality, it's a "drop the mic" moment on the magnitude of their ignorance. Their machine works because we understand quantum mechanics exceptionally well. It's a testament to the success of science which they seemingy fail to grasp and instead start coming up with supersticious fairy tales - the exact opposite of science - to explain how amazingly fast it is. It's not telling us anything new about the nature of reality but sadly it is telling us something anout human nature.
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Yes, it's a silly claim. The multiverse interpretation doesn't yield any difference in the equations from the other interpretations, because they use exactly the same equations for their predictions. It's one of those things that "could be true", but since there are several ways to interpret the equations, you can't assert that it *is* true.
OTOH, the multiverse is my favorite interpretation, also, among those that are consistent with what we know. But I've got a friend who prefers super-predeterminism, a
This would take forever with a slide rule! (Score:4, Funny)
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First, that "benchmark" does not say what they claim it says. Second, even if it did, that conclusion about parallel universes is complete bullshit and unfounded.
Why is it bullshit though? Show your work?
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Well, I see from the moderation that Google manages to scam the clueless rather nicely. But, to be fair, that is not hard to do.
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ãSXIminez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... ã
Ummmm (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Isn't this the same company with the dev who thought his AI was alive and conscious?
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I have an engineering mentor who I used to work for. He's a brilliant coder and has rock solid engineering principles. But he's VERY into astrology. I could never square that circle about him.
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I'm more of a "understand the core laws of the universe and be open to anything that fits within those laws. I also don't subscribe to the "if we don't know then it's possible" way of thinking. So with things like astrology I usually dismiss them outright. But I do agree that the human mind is tailor made to invent things and belief in the impossible is fundamental to human thought.
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That is simple: There are quite a few high-functioning idiots. These people are really good in some area but are incapable to apply their skills in a more general context. In fact, these people are often incapable to even see the possibility. That is the same reason why you get scientists that deeply believe non-scientific crap like religion.
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Astrology isn't any different than any other religion.
A lot of very smart people fall for religion, for some reason.
Indeed. Although these are not really smart people. That would require the skill to apply their mental powers without limits. You know, actual general intelligence. What these people have is more like "topic-restricted intelligence". They can do on a concrete level in specific concrete areas, but they cannot go on a meta-level where they leave the restriction to specific areas behind. I call that "idiot of the 2nd order".
Re: Ummmm (Score:3)
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No, not in the slightest.
Re: Ummmm (Score:2)
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You can't be this naive. LLMs aren't some tech that just sprang out of nowhere. It has been developed over a course of decades. There are dozens of publicly available research papers out there to read. Anyone with half a brain can understand the basics of how it works and understand that it is not intelligence. Only someone delusional would think otherwise. So again, no, I would never confuse it for anything other than a glorified lookup table with a mind-bogglingly large indexed dataset.
Re: Ummmm (Score:2)
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No, there just have always been people, like the subject of this article, who like to believe in ghosts. Even the most intelligent people can believe in ghosts. But that doesn't mean ghosts are real.
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For many of those years, at least some researchers believed intelligence would emerge given enough parameters. That now appears unlikely, but that wasn't as clear a few years ago.
I disagree. I studied this area during my CS degree 35 years ago. There were mindless cheerleaders that thought AGI was just a question of computing power. And then there were researchers that said, "not anytime soon and maybe never" and explained that something fundamental was missing and that it was not a question of scale. The same is still true. Of course, even back then, if you wanted to get your research proposal approved you at least had to hint your work could lead to AGI...
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You would not be fooled and I would not be either. But the sad fact of the matter is that only about 10-15% if the human race are independent thinkers. Many of the rest would be fooled, but that is because they are actually not using general intelligence, whether they have it or not. Just look at the comments here. The ratio is a bit better, but even here we have a lot of people that cannot see actual reality for shit.
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It's in the same vein as gullible people believing in psychics, magicians, or gods. They are good illusionists until their methods of deception are unveiled. But it happens a lot, and a lot of otherwise intelligent people buy into it.
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Being intelligent is not enough. You have to be willing to apply that intelligence. Unfortunately, only about 20% of the population is accessible to rational argument regarding something they care about and that does not actually seem to be correlated with intelligence.
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No. And, fascinatingly, you can even ask it whether it is general intelligence and it will nicely explain that it is not. So you have to be massively mentally incapable to believe ChatGPT is AGI. Obviously, most people are actually massively mentally incapable.
The other way to find out is a simple application of general intelligence to what it tells you. Most people are not capable of doing that though. The average person understands nothing.
Re: Ummmm (Score:3)
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So we can look forward to Hartmut Neven being fired?
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Punish them by forcing them to only get funding from the other universes and/or sentient bots.
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No. Isn't this the same company with the dev who thought his AI was alive and conscious?
I wouldn't put it like that. He *considered* it to be "alive" by his personal definition, which might not align with yours or mine. The way you say it makes it sounds like he was fooled, when in reality he was probably speaking about it more philosophically. I can see his point, because what does "alive" mean anyway?
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With bullshit definitions, bullshit claims become "accurate". You just failed the basic test on how to get insights.
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Yes. It is the same one. Although different idiots and liars behind this result. From the grandiose statement, I guess they fear for their jobs and are trying hard to come up with something to justify their continued employment.
Great Scott ! (Score:2)
To run this miracle of a processor, you're gonna need something with a little more kick to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity it needs. . . . . :|
. . . . and probably an entire lake just to keep it cooled
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Do you know that 1 quad is 240k gigawatt-hours and the USA has plateaud its energy demand at less than 100 quads for over a decade even as domestic oil production has soared? So are you talking about a rounding error in electricity production?
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Hugh Everett? (Score:1)
in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch
..was it not Hugh Everett that first proposed a many-worlds/multiverse interpretation, rather than David Deutsch? (I know super little about this and am probably showing my ignorance - David Deutschs work seems more directly relevant to computation?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III/ [wikipedia.org]
Kind of a problem (Score:1)
It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes
Hopefully not true, as if so it means you have basically built a terminal for a timeshare system.
Which means as other worlds in the multiverse also build the same quantum computation, it will slow down our quantum computers - possibly even causing contention over shared resources
You can imagine that as some point a galactic IT worker is going to come through a portal and demand we pay up for stolen resources.
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It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes
Hopefully not true, as if so it means you have basically built a terminal for a timeshare system.
Which means as other worlds in the multiverse also build the same quantum computation, it will slow down our quantum computers - possibly even causing contention over shared resources
I guess we can look forward to an infinite number of infinity wars! Maybe we're already in one and just don't realize it yet.
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Technobabble (Score:2)
All I want to know is if this thing can be harnessed to get me into the universe in which Star Trek was not ruined!
A More Likely Conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
Posts like this are not signs of new physics. They are signs that the underlying technology is fruitless and functionally a scam. It's also a sign that people running the programs have become shut-eye [youtube.com] and believe their own hype. Much like fusion power, AI, self-driving cars, biofuels, clean coal, hydrogen fuel cells, carbon-capture, and quantum computing isn't real, it's the sincere hope of the rich and powerful who want to keep being rich and powerful.
If something can't go on forever, it won't. There are real, physical limits to what you can do in a society determined by how much energy that society can capture. Fusion power lets you get around those limits without changing anything else about how society functions. It would be nice for those who enjoy the status quo but it just isn't so. Fusion power was, and will forever remain, twenty years in the future.
There are real, physical limits on the number of cars a society can accommodate. Not least of which is the limit of people who can both afford to purchase and maintain a vehicle and are also capable of legally operating it. When you hit that limit, car sales will flatten or shrink. Self-driving cars let you get around those limits and thus capture an entirely virgin market. That's great if you are a car manufacturer (or if you're in the financial sector around it that is actually several times its size). If it was going to happen, it would have happened anytime in the last two decades of it being a few years away.
Fossil fuels are great. Lots of energy stored in a compact and convenient package that stores well and is easy to transport. However, the consequences of its use are dire. Biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, and clean coal let you keep that infrastructure and those supply chains largely unchanged while avoiding or delaying those consequences. That would be great if you are in the most profitable industry in human history. The fact that the numbers don't add up won't stop those people from wishing they did.
The computer industry has been fabulously successful. It's made a lot of people very wealthy. One of the reasons for this is that Moore's Law means nearly everyone who uses a computer functionally has to replace that computer every five years. If you are a power user, you probably have to replace your computer every two years at a premium price. But Moore's Law isn't a physical law; it's an economic law. It's always been about how often can you reasonably make a person buy a new computer before opportunity costs dictate they stick with what's working for now and wait a little bit to get a much better option. The hard, physical limits of the problem of increasing computational density have slowed the ability of the industry to keep pace with that economic reality. If the average user goes from buying a new computer every five years to buying a new computer every five and a half years, the market contraction that would represent would devastate the entire industry. But if quantum computers come out, everyone needs to buy all new computers right now. Even if you don't use quantum processes, you'd need new classical computers designed with the knowledge that quantum computers are out there and have to be accounted for in the security of your system. That would be great for the industry. To be clear, it hasn't been shown to actually work. Certain parts of it have somewhat worked in isolation. The more dramatic promises are, as yet, vaporware.
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Hey Malthus, can you do limits on food next?
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Except that fusion power does exist.
I know of at least one project (Germany's Wendelstein X research reactor, a stellerator) that reached all its power and efficiency goals. Take-away message was: $20bn and you can build version 1 of a commercially feasible reactor -- admittedly with a high economic risk for the first 1, 2, 3... instances. But there's no technology required and which we don't have.
The biggest obstacle was still better superconducting magnets, as they require a lot of energy to cool (making
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No. The Wendelstein X-7 never made any claims like that. There is a ton of tech required we do not have. There is a > 50 year timeline for a commercial prototype. It is completely unknown whether it will be commercial viable, ever. All they said recently was that the Physics seems to allow building a fusion power plant and no fundamental (!) problems seem to be left. There are tons of engineering and applied science problems left.
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No. The Wendelstein X-7 never made any claims like that.
Actually, they did:
The first link is a press release of a 1.3 Gigajoule operation, and there's a short-term plan for an 18 Gigajoule improvement.
The 2nd link gives some more context as to the long-term startegy.
The 3rd link is a podcast with the people behind Wendelstein 7-X.
They're all German only (sorry for that). For the text it won't be
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There are tons of engineering and applied science problems left.
... and I'd like to emphasize that all the technolodies Wendelstein 7-X employed are tried-and-true industry standards. Even the superconducting magnets -- there's no science-fiction class of solutions there.
So yes, there are "tons of engineering problems left" in pretty much the same sense as Tesla has "tons of engineering problems left" to actually build & deliver a car at scale, like they did with Model 3, or wish to do with the Cybertruck.
These aren't a fundamental "can't be done without" class of p
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Posts like this are not signs of new physics. They are signs that the underlying technology is fruitless and functionally a scam. It's also a sign that people running the programs have become shut-eye [youtube.com] and believe their own hype.
Yep, pretty much. Or at least that most of the promises made and the timelines given are scams. For example, the timeline for fusion is not and never was "20 years". It currently (!) is about 50-100 years for practical impact (not for "fixing all energy problems", that would take significantly longer) and that is assuming it becomes commercial viable, which is not assured at all. Talk to an actual fusion researcher and that is the numbers and limitations you get. Talk to a fanboi and it is "20 years away, m
Bullshit (Score:2)
There is nothing in this article that even remotely pertains to any sort of proof that backs up the claims. This story is about as valid as that one time a Google researcher said that their chatbot was sentient. Utter bullshit.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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Indeed. But the aggressive believers cannot see that.
Ether that ... (Score:2)
OR the wavefunction collapsed completely in line with the Copenhagen interpretation. Excellent! We've now got solid proof that our various interpretations of quantum physics are indeed varied and interpretations. Good work, gentlemen.
So... (Score:2)
Nobel prize (Score:2)
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The problem here is that most people do not understand that theory is not truth, but a (universally) imperfect description of how things work. These people believe that if the mathematics predicts something, reality will of course bow to mathematics. That is obvious nonsense. Sadly, even people that _really_ should know better fall for this bullshit, as this guy here has.
Apparently it does not actually imply MWI (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay so a 20-minute dive into Wikipedia, the AI summaries from Google search and some online discussions, based on the "simple" thought, if we are living in a multiverse (Many World Interpretation i.e. MWI not Copenhagen Interpretation AFAIU) then is the calculation wrong in every other universe but ours? Is this just marketing speak to sell his product or something to consider?
It sounds like unless you have a PhD it is easy to fall into sci-fi expectations about what an accessible multiverse is. But the comments I've seen seem to imply that successful quantum computation does NOT in fact imply that we are in a multiverse. In other words, it works because of quantum mechanics, not because of an interpretation.
Article #3 below was very helpful and is a response to TFA. Basically the exponentially improved error correction is fabulous but the part about living in a multiverse is a "white-hot lie" and he should know better.
#1 https://physics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
#2 https://physics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
#3 https://bigthink.com/starts-wi... [bigthink.com]
Google: would successful quantum computation imply a certain interpretation of the universe is correct?
Re:Apparently it does not actually imply MWI (Score:5, Informative)
Thought I'd post the next 3 paragraphs from Ethan Siegel. I really enjoyed it.
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Yep. That nicely sums it up. Hartmut Neven confuses a possible theory with reality and then deduces that what that theory predicts is reality. That is, essentially, junk-science.
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Pretty much so. In actual reality, nobody knows how quantum entanglement works and, consequentially, what it implies. Any mathematical model is just that: a model. MWI is a pure speculative construct that prevents the mathematics from becoming even more complex, so it has appeal to theoreticians. That does not mean it is an accurate description of reality. At the very least, it would require extraordinary proof to even seriously consider it (because it is completely contrary to personal observation), and we
Sliders (Score:2)
When U don't understand what yr messin' with (Score:1)
xkcd clone response. [reddit.com]
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That is funny and appropriate, but it is not xkcd.
Here is an actual one, a bit older: https://xkcd.com/1861/ [xkcd.com]
Really so? (Score:1)
From time to time IT is suffering from 'big sales and big words' that come out years later. Y2K. NFT. MS-DOS.
How can we discern bullocks from reality? The connection with reality. Here, Quantum connects to another mathematical model- construction. Are we now linking two scientific shitholes and seeing them merge into a singular BS or is this the birth of a revelation of a new era? Who can tell? I can only doubt.
Now we know the real reason for this research! (Score:3)
Bad form all around (Score:2)
I don't like the cherry picking of comparison to naive software implementations of quite useless RCS nor the invocation of unwarranted MWI mysticism invoked seemingly for no reason other to draw attention to yourself.
With the quantum computer announcements you almost always always get meaningless indicators of power often in terms of number of qubits whose implications are architecture dependent or descriptions of simulations so specific the machine described is indistinguishable from an analog computer.
Wha
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Indeed. They need to stop spewing bullshit if they want to be taken seriously by people with a clue. But maybe they do not actually want that.
The hype continues (Score:2)
Where have I heard this before? (Score:2)
Founder of company claims company product delivers super-natural performance.
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Does the strong emotional content of your post say more about you than about multiverses?
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Agreed. The basically hysteric claims in there to me only indicate these people fear their jobs getting cut and hence try to make inflated claims how important their work is.