Comment on A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley
frank@sopuli.xyz 10 hours agoNah I’d put money on it being quantum computing. I think quantum has some neat applications, and the tech is cool as hell. But I think it’ll be sold like “this is gonna instantly transform business overnight” and people will try to sell quantum computing power
cityboundforest@beehaw.org 8 hours ago
Tbf, and to my understanding, quantum computers will break current encryption algorithms, so it kind of will transform business overnight, just maybe not in the way these people are selling.
frank@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
That’s how it’s been explained to me by laymen many many times. Just casually (ish, I have a math degree) looking at the math, chatting with a friend who is a quantum physicist, being involved with computers, etc I find that Grover’s Algorithm is not at all capable of something like that. I’m not sure there’s anything better in terms of breaking encryption
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover's_algorithm
I am stoked for what it could do for protein folding, or other heavy simulation work, but in terms of proper encryption I don’t believe it actually will change much.
valgarf@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
The typical example is Shor’s algorithm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm
It allows to efficiently find the prime factors of an integer - a problem without a known polynomial algorithm on a classical computer.
This would directly break RSA encryption, as it relies on factorisation being difficult.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_cryptosystem
However, there are encryption algorithms that are considered safe even against a quantum computer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography
frank@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
That’s fair, Shor’s algorithm would probably break a bunch of older encryption. It’s a little further out of reach, in terms of feasibility but who knows how fast it could speed up