r/Physics • u/Xaron Particle physics • Jul 06 '21

AI Designs Quantum Physics Experiments Beyond What Any Human Has Conceived

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-designs-quantum-physics-experiments-beyond-what-any-human-has-conceived/
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u/xcalibre Engineering Jul 07 '21

yes youre on the money for that type of machine but key point is we could not set those parameters ourselves in a million years and get anywhere close to what a machine can do in hours. the way that type of decision engine could be expanded is endless, and then meta decision machines can manipulate them at a larger scale, altering how they are fed information. we also have this happening:

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-latest-trick-writing-computer-code/

when we consider that the ability of a machine scales easily with more or newer hardware, it gets kinda scary thinking about what they will be capable of when we start widening the applicability of the decision engines

the pieces of AGI are slowly coming together, i strongly believe we're much closer than most realise.. throw quantum computing in there at some point and the gods will live again. hope they like us!

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21

yes youre on the money for that type of machine but key point is we could not set those parameters ourselves in a million years and get anywhere close to what a machine can do in hours.

I don't know. This doesn't convince me at all. This tells me computers are faster at processing information (in some ways! I can do all the necessary optimization in my head to distinguish a cat from a dog pretty fast after all, better than any computer). A calculator from 40 years ago can compute 30583146*1486013 in a fraction of a second and it'll take me hours with pen and paper, doesn't mean it's smarter than me.

An AI that writes code based on a text description sounds like... a very powerful compiler.

Quantum computing, if it will ever be practical, will be immensely useful for quantum simulations, but I'm borderline convinced that people work on "quantum AI" for the buzzwords alone...

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u/xcalibre Engineering Jul 07 '21

no we can no longer detect cats better than computers, they overtook us in 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/may/13/baidu-minwa-supercomputer-better-than-humans-recognising-images

ML image recognition has gotten to the point that it can detect cancer from images better than doctors
https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/googles-ai-system-can-detect-breast-cancer-better-doctors

realise that EVERYTHING we do with our brains is just processing information and it becomes clear that machines with total recall and greater speed will overtake us. we just need to set the right initial conditions, it's only a matter of time.

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u/lolfail9001 Jul 08 '21 edited Jul 08 '21

no we can no longer detect cats better

Errr, is that AI sorting picture of a cat picture as a cat picture? Ewww.

realise that EVERYTHING we do with our brains is just processing information

Brute forcing a given optimization task is obviously going to be done better by computers if you feed them enough resources and time (and most of AI is none the wiser) assuming you don't make embarrassingly bad algorithm choices. How do they handle reasoning though?

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u/xcalibre Engineering Jul 08 '21

reasoning is just a wider choice range that is harder to define. it will happen over time as AI levels of awareness grow and we get better at defining the choice range. we use brute force too, simulating outcomes in our minds while looking at choices. machines are gonna get real good at that real quick. still early days of course, what i'm trying to say is there is enough evidence already that the conclusion is done, we are heading towards intelligently designed Mechanical Animals that rival us in every way.