Schrodinger's Killer App: The Race to Build the World's First Quantum Computer | Quantum Computing Breakthrough for Scientific Research & AI Development

Dr Dowling is certainly knows his subject and is a genuinely funny guy.As Richard Feynman once said, "if you can't explain your subject to a layperson then this is a sign that you really do not understand it."Dr Dowling understands Quantum Mechanics.Dr Dowling has the ability to explain quantum mechanics in a most concise way so that even the layperson is able to follow and understand what has been a difficult subject for most to grasp. And to boot he does so in a most amusing and entertaining way.Unfortunately this is a characteristic of the author and not many authors will be able to emulate explaining a difficult topic, like this, in such an elegant and entertaining manner.Dr Dowling describes Quantum phenomenon with these three properties:1) Unreality - The state has no direction until it is measured.2) Uncertainty - The particle collapses randomly if measured in the wrong direction3) Non-Locality - Distant entangled quantum particles treated as one and collapse simultaneously influencing the outcome of the other measurement over what can be very large distances. (Faster than light simultaneous collapse).These three properties describe completely `quantum phenomenon'.Each property can be defined as a gate in the Hardware of a quantum computer. A computer is made up of many of these gates.To construct a universal Quantum Computer (eg. capable of solving The Shor Factorisation Algorithm) then it is necessary to utilise all of the above three gates.Einstein insisted on Reality, Certainty and Locality and Dr Dowling gives the best explanation ever on Bells theorem and how it is experimentally possible to distinguish between these two perspectives.Nearer the end of the book Dr Dowling discusses the future of Computing. He is upfront that he firmly stands in the Strong AI camp of puntersRoger Penrose on the Opposing Strong Quantum AI camp cops a lashing from Dr Dowling ferocious wit.Here I do not think that Dr Dowling gives Dr Penrose `a fair shake of the sauce bottle' as they say in Australia, so I am going to bat for Dr Penrose here in this short piece that follows.Either:1) Consciousness utilises a physical phenomena in nature - yet unknown physics as Dr Penrose has proposed.or2) Consciousness does not utilise any new physical phenomena in nature and can be totally explained by our current technologyDr Dowling suggests that consciousness can be explained by a Universal Turing machine (option 2) ie Neural networks with Rational Numbered Synaptic Weights.Penrose convincingly argues in both of his books, using the mathematics of the Halting Problem, that our thinking process can not be based on an algorithmic procedure. Turing himself was aware of the computational limits of the Turing machine.Well, if proposal 2 is correct then Dr Dowling does not give any explanation of how computers (Turing machines) will eventually become conscious and there is absolutely no evidence for this to date. He does not refute Dr Penrose's non-computability proof - he simply ignores it.I think the physical world is way too chaotic for any Android (like Data on Star trek) based on a Turing machine to ever function with sufficient deftness as we humans are currently capable of.Dr Penrose argues that our brains can solve non-computable problems. That is our brains are Super Turing (over and above) Turing computer processors.Dr Penrose proves that all digital neural networks are equivalent to a Turing Machine.Dr Penrose states clearly that the Universal Quantum Computer (describe in this book); "cannot achieve anything beyond what could already be done in principle by conventional digital computation". He is stating that the human brain is not a Universal Quantum Computer of the vain that we are currently racing to build."There is nothing `non-computational' in such a procedure in the ordinary sense of `computational', since U is a computable operation and R is a purely probabilistic procedure. What could be achieved in principle by a quantum computer could also be achieved, in principle, by a suitable Turing machine with-randomizer"."Thus, even a quantum computer would not be able to perform the operations required for human conscious understanding. The hope would be that the subtleties of what is REALLY going on when the state vector `appears' to get reduced, rather than just the stop-gap random procedure R, would lead us to something that is genuinely non-computable."Dr Penrose clearly states throughout his books that the construction of a non-computable (Super-Turing) processor is not restricted to biological entities. Dr Dowling seems to have missed this point.Dr Dowling's book was certainly a joy to read. I can easily see why one of the reviewers devoured this book in just two sittings. It makes you want to read more because the topic is so interesting and the author so entertaining.I hope Dr Dowling writes a book with a similar title in 15 years time. I for one will certainly be interested.