One step closer to the singularity if this is not hype. Some of the D-wave blogs talk about automatic programming and the use of traditional pc's to send problems to the QC, and return a solution. THIS looks like the technology needed to bring about AGI. They expect a 1,000 qbit QC by 2008. A 32 qbit QC would be the fastest computer in the world.

AGI can be very dangerous if we create one without the proper safeguards as Eliezer Yudkowsky always reminds us. One should temper their enthusiasm with caution. As hardware advances faster and faster, it becomes easier and easier for a poorly planned AGI to be built. We need to make sure we use our limited time wisely to research Friendly AI.

Is AGI the kind of problem that can be accelerated by quantum computation, though? Wikipedia saith, "This dramatic advantage of quantum computers is currently known to exist for only those three problems: factoring, discrete logarithm, and quantum physics simulations." So conventional encryption becomes useless, and better quantum chemistry simulations mean we get nanotech faster, but no AGI.

One could argue that a computer that can play a googleplex factorial of chess games in a nano-second wouldn't have any greater probability of developing intelligence than a billion classical computers doing the same thing untill the heat death of the universe.

It will be a powerful tool for development, but until we understand what intelligence really is, it may at first just be the fastest routes to dead ends.

As James Martin has written, there is already a form of computer intelligence that in very narrow ranges is already millions of times greater than ours, but not broad and with zero common sense.

I wonder if for the forseable future if we will just have A.I., genetic algorithms that will just be trillions of times faster and better than what we have now, and extremely usefull, but not intelligence in our human sense of the word.

Maybe Q.C. will allow us to simulate new universes in which simular types of intelligence evolves to ours....or maybe we are part of a larger simulation!

Any more news on this? How did it go? If you know, best to post a new blog/news story/forum entry so that it gets brought to the front page of the site.