pcalau12i

As I said, they will likely come to the home in form of cloud computing, which is how advanced AI comes to the home. You can run some AI models at home but they're nowhere near as advanced as cloud-based services and so not as useful. I'm not sure why, if we ever have AGI, it would need to be run at home. It doesn't need to be. It would be nice if it could be ran entirely at home, but that's no necessity, just a convenience. Maybe your personal AGI robot who does all your chores for you only works when the WiFi is on. That would not prevent people from buying it, I mean, those Amazon Fire TVs are selling like hot cakes and they only work when the WiFi is on. There also already exists some AI products that require a constant internet connection.

It is kind of similar with quantum computing, there actually do exist consumer-end home quantum computers, such as Triangulum, but it only does 3 qubits, so it's more of a toy than a genuinely useful computer. For useful tasks, it will all be cloud-based in all likelihood. The NMR technology Triangulum is based on, it's not known to be scalable, so the only other possibility that quantum computers will make it to the home in a non-cloud based fashion would be optical quantum computing. There could be a breakthrough there, you can't rule it out, but I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed. If quantum computers become useful for regular people in the next few decades, I would bet it would be all through cloud-based services.

If quantum computers actually ever make significant progress to the point that they're useful (big if) it would definitely be able to have positive benefits for the little guy. It is unlikely you will have a quantum chip in your smartphone (although, maybe it could happen if optical quantum chips ever make a significant breakthrough, but that's even more unlikely), but you will still be able to access them cheaply over the cloud.

I mean, IBM spends billions of on its quantum computers and gives cloud access to anyone who wants to experiment with them completely free. That's how I even first learned quantum computing, running algorithms on IBM's cloud-based quantum computers. I'm sure if the demand picks up if they stop being experimental and actually become useful, they'll probably start charging a fee, but the fact it is free now makes me suspect it will not be very much.

I think a comparison can be made with LLMs, such as with OpenAI. It takes billions to train those giant LLMs as well and can only be trained on extremely expensive computers, yet a single query costs less than a penny, and there are still free versions available. Expense for cloud access will likely always be incredibly cheap, it's a great way to bring super expensive hardware to regular people.

That's likely what the future of quantum computing will be for regular people, quantum computing through cloud access. Even if you never run software that can benefit from it, you may get benefits indirectly, such as, if someone uses a quantum computer to help improve medicine and you later need that medicine.

quantum nature of the randomly generated numbers helped specifically with quantum computer simulations, but based on your reply you clearly just meant that you were using it as a multi-purpose RNG that is free of unwanted correlations between the randomly generated bits

It is used as the source of entropy for the simulator. Quantum mechanics is random, so to actually get the results you have to sample it. In quantum computing, this typically involves running the same program tens of thousands of times, which are called "shots," and then forming a distribution of the results. The sampling with the simulator uses the QRNG for the source of entropy, so the sampling results are truly random.

Out of curiosity, have you found that the card works as well as advertised? I ask because it seems to me that any imprecision in the design and/or manufacture of the card could introduce systematic errors in the quantum measurements that would result in correlations in the sampled bits, so I am curious if you have been able to verify that is not something to be concerned about.

I have tried several hardware random number generators and usually there is no bias either because they specifically designed it not to have a bias or they have some level of post-processing to remove the bias. If there is a bias, it is possible to remove the bias yourself. There are two methods that I tend to use that depends upon the source of the bias.

To be "random" simply means each bit is statistically independent of each other bit, not necessarily that the outcome is uniform, i.e. 50% chance of 0 and 50% chance of 1. It can still be considered truly random with a non-uniform distribution, such as 52% chance of 0 and 48% chance of 1, as long as each successive bit is entirely independent of any previous bit, i.e. there is no statistical analysis you could ever perform on the bits to improve your chances of predicting the next one beyond the initial distribution of 52%/48%.

In the case where it is genuinely random (statistical independence) yet is non-uniform (which we can call nondeterministic bias), you can transform it into a uniform distribution using what is known as a von Neumann extractor. This takes advantage of a simple probability rule for statistically independent data whereby Pr(A)Pr(B)=Pr(B)Pr(A). Let's say A=0 and B=1, then Pr(0)Pr(1)=Pr(1)Pr(0). That means you can read two bits at a time rather than one and throw out all results that are 00 and 11 and only keep results that are 01 or 10, and then you can map 01 to 0 and 10 to 1. You would then be mathematically guaranteed that the resulting distribution of bits are perfectly uniform with 50% chance of 0 and 50% chance of 1.

I have used this method to develop my own hardware random number generator that can pull random numbers from the air, by analyzing tiny fluctuations in electrical noise in your environment using an antenna. The problem is that electromagnetic waves are not always hitting the antenna, so there can often be long strings of zeros, so if you set something up like this, you will find your random numbers are massively skewed towards zero (like 95% chance of 0 and 5% chance of 1). However, since each bit still is truly independent of the successive bit, using this method will give you a uniform distribution of 50% 0 and 50% 1.

Although, one thing to keep in mind is the bigger the skew, the more data you have to throw out. With my own hardware random number generator I built myself that pulls the numbers from the air, it ends up throwing out the vast majority of the data due to the huge bias, so it can be very slow. There are other algorithms which throw out less data but they can be much more mathematically complicated and require far more resources.

In the cases where it may not be genuinely random because the bias is caused by some imperfection in the design (which we can call deterministic bias), you can still uniformly distribute the bias across all the bits so that not only would be much more difficult to detect the bias, but you will still get uniform results. The way to do this is to take your random number and XOR it with some data set that is non-random but uniform, which you can generate from a pseudorandom number generator like the C's rand() function.

This will not improve the quality of the random numbers because, let's say if it is biased 52% to 48% but you use this method to de-bias it so the distribution is 50% to 50%, if someone can predict the next value of the rand() function that would increase their ability to make a prediction back to 52% to 48%. You can make it more difficult to do so by using a higher quality pseudorandom number generator like using something like AES to generate the pseudorandom numbers. NIST even has standards for this kind of post-processing.

But ultimately using this method is only obfuscation, making it more and more difficult to discover the deterministic bias by hiding it away more cleverly, but does not truly get rid of it. It's impossible to take a random data set with some deterministic bias and trulyget rid of the deterministic bias purely through deterministic mathematical transformations,. You can only hide it away very cleverly. Only if the bias is nondeterministic can you get rid of it with a mathematical transformation.

It is impossible to reduce the quality of the random numbers this way. If the entropy source is truly random and truly non-biased, then XORing it with the C rand() function, despite it being a low-quality pseudorandom number generator, is mathematically guaranteed to still output something truly random and non-biased. So there is never harm in doing this.

However, in my experience if you find your hardware random number generator is biased (most aren't), the bias usually isn't very large. If something is truly random but biased so that there is a 52% chance of 0 and 48% chance of 1, this isn't enough of a bias to actually cause much issues. You could even use it for something like cryptography and even if someone does figure out the bias, it would not increase their ability to predict keys enough to actually put anything at risk. If you use a cryptographysically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG) in place of something like C rand(), they will likely not be able to discover the bias in the first place, as these do a very good job at obfuscating the bias to the point that it will likely be undetectable.

I'm not sure what you mean by "turning into into a classical random number." The only point of the card is to make sure that the sampling results from the simulator are truly random, down to a quantum level, and have no deterministic patterns in them. Indeed, actually using quantum optics for this purpose is a bit overkill as there are hardware random number generators which are not quantum-based and produce something good enough for all practical purposes, like Intel Secure Key Technology which is built into most modern x86 CPUs.

For that reason, my software does allow you to select other hardware random number generators. For example, you can easily get an entire build (including the GPU) that can run simulations of 14 qubits for only a few hundred dollars if you just use the Intel Secure Key Technology option. It also supports a much cheaper device called TrueRNGv3 which is a USB device. It also has an option to use a pseudorandom number generator if you're not that interested in randomness accuracy, and when using the pseudorandom number generator option it also supports "hidden variables" which really just act as the seed to the pseudorandom number generator.

For most most practical purpose, no, you do not need this card and it's definitely overkill. The main reason I even bought it was just because I was adding support for hardware random number generators to my software and I wanted to support a quantum one and so I needed to buy it to actually test it and make sure it works for it. But now I use it regularly for the back-end to my simulator just because I think it is neat.

I own a quantum random number generator on a PCie card that uses optical effects for random number generation. It cost me over $2000. I use it for quantum computer simulations.

By applying both that and the many worlds hypothesis, the idea of quantum immortality comes up, and thats a real mind bender. Its also a way to verifiably prove many worlds accurate(afaik the only way)

MWI only somewhat makes sense (it still doesn't make much sense) if you assume the "branches" cannot communicate with each other after decoherence occurs. "Quantum immortality" mysticism assumes somehow your cognitive functions can hop between decoherent branches where you are still alive if they cease in a particular branch. It is self-contradictory. There is nothing in the mathematical model that would predict this and there is no mechanism to explain how it could occur.

Imagine creating a clone which is clearly not the same entity as you because it is standing in a different location and, due to occupying different frames of reference, your paths would diverge after the initial cloning, with the clone forming different memories and such. "Quantum immortality" would be as absurd as saying that if you then suddenly died, your cognitive processes would hop to your clone, you would "take over their body" so to speak.

Why would that occur? What possible mechanism would cause it? Doesn't make any sense to me. It seems more reasonable to presume that if you die, you just die. Your clone lives on, but you don't. In the grand multiverse maybe there is a clone of you that is still alive, but that universe is not the one you occupy, in this one your story ends.

It also has a problem similar to reincarnation mysticism. If MWI is correct (it's not), then there would be an infinite number of other decoherent branches containing other "yous." Which "you" would your consciousness hop into when you die, assuming this even does occur (it doesn't)? It makes zero sense.

To reiterate though, assuming many worlds is accurate, the expiriment carries no risk to you. Due to the anthropic principle, you will always find yourself in the reality in which you survive.

You see the issue right here, you say the reality in which you survive, except there would be an infinite number of them. There would be no the reality, there would be a reality, just one of an infinitude of them. Yet, how is the particular one you find yourself in decided?

MWI is even worse than the clone analogy I gave, because it would be like saying there are an infinite number of clones of you, and when you die your cognitive processes hop from your own brain to one of theirs. Not only is there no mechanism to cause this, but even if we presume it is true, which one of your infinite number of clones would your cognitive processes take control of?

Depends upon what you mean by "consciousness." A lot of the literature seems to use "consciousness" just to refer to physical reality as it exists from a particular perspective, for some reason. For example, one popular definition is "what it is like to be in a particular perspective." The term "to be" refers to, well, being, which refers to, well, reality. So we are just talking about reality as it actually exists from a particular perspective, as opposed to mere description of reality from that perspective. (The description of a thing is always categorically different from the ontology of the thing.)

I find it bizarre to call this "consciousness," but words are words. You can define them however you wish. If we define "consciousness" in this sense, as many philosophers do, then it does not make logical sense to speak of your "consciousness" doing anything at all after you die, as your "consciousness" would just be defined as reality as it actually exists from your perspective. Perspectives always implicitly entail a physical object that is at the basis of that perspective, akin to the zero-point of a coordinate system, which in this case that object is you.

If you cease to exist, then your perspective ceases to even be defined. The concept of "your perspective" would no longer even be meaningful. It would be kind of like if a navigator kept telling you to go "more north" until eventually you reach the north pole, and then they tell you to go "more north" yet again. You'd be confused, because "more north" does not even make sense anymore at the north pole. The term ceases to be meaningfully applicable. If consciousness is defined as being from a particular perspective (as many philosophers in the literature define it), then by logical necessity the term ceases to be meaningful after the object that is the basis of that perspective ceases to exist. It neither exists nor ceases to exist, but no longer is even well-defined.

But, like I said, I'm not a fan of defining "consciousness" in this way, albeit it is popular to do so in the literature. My criticism of the "what it is like to be" definition is mainly that most people tend to associate "consciousness" with mammalian brains, yet the definition is so broad that there is no logical reason as to why it should not be applicable to even a single fundamental particle.

This problem presupposes metaphysical realism, so you have to be a metaphysical realist to take the problem seriously. Metaphysical realism is a particular kind of indirect realism whereby you posit that everything we observe is in some sense not real, sometimes likened to a kind of "illusion" created by the mammalian brain (I've also seen people describe it as an "internal simulation"), called "consciousness" or sometimes "subjective experience" with the adjective "subjective" used to make it clear it is being interpreted as something unique to conscious subjects and not ontologically real.

If everything we observe is in some sense not reality, then "true" reality must by definition be independent of what we observe. If this is the case, then it opens up a whole bunch of confusing philosophical problems, as it would logically mean the entire universe is invisible/unobservable/nonexperiential, except in the precise configuration of matter in the human brain which somehow "gives rise to" this property of visibility/observability/experience. It seems difficult to explain this without just presupposing this property arbitrarily attaches itself to brains in a particular configuration, i.e. to treat it as strongly emergent, which is effectively just dualism, indeed the founder of the "hard problem of consciousness" is a self-described dualist.

This philosophical problem does not exist in direct realist schools of philosophy, however, such as Jocelyn Benoist's contextual realism, Carlo Rovelli's weak realism, or in Alexander Bogdanov's empiriomonism. It is solely a philosophical problem for metaphysical realists, because they begin by positing that there exists some fundamental gap between what we observe and "true" reality, then later have to figure out how to mend the gap. Direct realist philosophies never posit this gap in the first place and treat reality as precisely equivalent to what we observe it to be, so it simply does not posit the existence of "consciousness" and it would seem odd in a direct realist standpoint to even call experience "subjective."

The "hard problem" and the "mind-body problem" are the main reasons I consider myself a direct realist. I find that it is a completely insoluble contradiction at the heart of metaphysical realism, I don't think it even can be solved because you cannot posit a fundamental gap and then mend the gap later without contradicting yourself. There has to be no gap from the get-go. I see these "problems" as not things to be "solved," but just a proof-by-contradiction that metaphysical realism is incorrect. All the arguments against direct realism, on the other hand, are very weak and people who espouse them don't seem to give them much thought.

There is a strange phenomenon in academia of physicists so distraught over the fact that quantum mechanics is probabilistic that they invent a whole multiverse to get around it.

Let's say a photon hits a beam splitter and has a 25% chance of being reflected and a 75% chance of passing through. You could make this prediction deterministic if you claim the universe branches off into a grand multiverse where in 25% of the branches the photon is reflected and in 75% of the branches it passes through. The multiverse would branch off in this way with the same structure every single time, guaranteed.

Believe it or not, while they are a minority opinion, there are quite a few academics who unironically promote this idea just because they like that it restores determinism to the equations. One of them is David Deutsch who, to my knowledge, was the first to publish a paper arguing that he believed quantum computers delegate subtasks to branches of the multiverse.

It's just not true at all that the quantum chip gives any evidence for the multiverse, because believing in the multiverse does not make any new predictions. Everyone who proposes this multiverse view (called the Many-Worlds Interpretation) do not actually believe the other branches of the multiverse would actually be detectable. It is something purely philosophical in order to restore determinism, and so there is no test you could do to confirm it. If you believe the outcome of experiments are just random and there is one universe, you would also predict that we can build quantum computers, so the invention of quantum computers in no way proves a multiuverse.

It does not lend credence to the notion at all, that statement doesn't even make sense. Quantum computing is inline with the predictions of quantum mechanics, it is not new physics, it is engineering, the implementation of physics we already know to build stuff, so it does not even make sense to suggest engineering something is "discovering" something fundamentally new about nature.

MWI is just a philosophical worldview from people who dislike that quantum theory is random. Outcomes of experiments are nondeterministic. Bell's theorem proves you cannot simply interpret the nondeterminism as chaos, because any attempt to introduce a deterministic outcome at all would violate other known laws of physics, so you have to just accept it is nondeterministic.

MWI proponents, who really dislike nondeterminism (for some reason I don't particularly understand) came up with a "clever" workaround. Rather than interpreting probability distributions as just that, probability distributions, you instead interpret them as physical objects in an infinite-dimensional space. Let's say I flip four coins so the possible outcomes are HH, HT, TH, and TT, and each you can assign a probability value to. Rather than interpreting the probability values as the likelihood of events occurring, you interpret the "faceness" property of the coin as a multi-dimensional property that is physically "stretched" in four dimensions, where the amount it is "stretched" depends upon those values. For example, if the probabilities are 25% HH, 0% HT, 25% TH, and 50% TT, you interpret it as if the coin's "faceness" property is physically stretched out in four physical dimensions of 0.25 HH, 0 HT, 0.25 TH, and 0.5 TT.

Of course, in real quantum mechanics, it gets even more complicated than this because probability amplitudes are complex-valued, so you have an additional degree of freedom, so this would be an eight-dimensional physical space the "quantum" coins (like electron spin state) would be stretched out in. Additionally, notice how the number of dimensions depends upon the number of possible outcomes, which would grow exponentially by 2^N the more coins you have under consideration. MWI proponents thus posit that each description like this is actually just a limited description due to a limited perspective. In reality, the dimensions of this physical space would be 2^N where N=number of possible states of all particles in the entire universe, so basically infinite. The whole universe is a single giant infinite-dimensional object propagating through this infinite-dimensional space, something they called the "universal wave function."

If you believe this, then it kind of restores determinism. If there is a 50% probability a photon will reflect off of a beam splitter and a 50% probability it will pass through, what MWI argues is that there is in fact a 100% chance it will pass through and be reflected simulateously, because it basically is stretched out in proportions of 0.5 going both directions. When the observer goes to observe it, the observer themselves also would get stretched out in those proportions, of both simulateously seeing it it pass through and be reflected. Since this outcome is guaranteed, it is deterministic.

But why do we only perceive a single outcome? MWI proponents chalk it up to how our consciousness interprets the world, that it forms models based on a limited perspective, and these perspectives become separated from each other in the universal wave function during a process known as decoherence. This leads to an illusion that only a single perspective can be seen at a time, that even though the human observer is actually stretched out across all possible outcomes, they only believe they can perceive one of them at a time, and which one we settle on is random, I guess kind of like the blue-black/white-gold dress thing, your brain just kind of picks one at random, but the randomness is apparent rather than real.

This whole story really is not necessary if you are just fine with saying the outcome is random. There is nothing about quantum computers that changes this story. Crazy David has a bad habit of publishing embarrassingly bad papers in favor of MWI. One paper he defends MWI with a false dichotomy pitching MWI as if its only competition is Copenhagen, then straw manning Copenhagen by equating it to an objective collapse model, which no supporter of this interpretation I am aware of would ever agree to this characterization of it.

Another paper where he brings up quantum computing, he basically just argues that MWI must be right because it gives a more intuitive understanding of how quantum computing actually provides an advantage, that it delegates subtasks to different branches of the multiverse. It's bizarre to me how anyone could think something being "intuitive" or not (it's debatable whether or not it even is more intuitive) is evidence in favor of it. At best, it is an argument in favor of utility: if you personally find MWI intuitive (I don't) and it helps you solve problems, then have at ya, but pretending this somehow is evidence that there really is a multiverse makes no sense.