Comment on A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley
cityboundforest@beehaw.org 3 weeks agoBut I think it’ll be sold like “this is gonna instantly transform business overnight”
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.
current encryption algorithms
The encryption-scares don’t really bother me. It’s as if everyone thinks quantum computers will come of age but for some reason quantum encryption won’t equally scale up to match it?
Like, of course current encryption methods are at risk, they aren’t designed to match quantum computing and any that would, while it would be nice if it also performed on current PC’s… it wouldn’t need to in the longrun.
If we get a breakthrough moment with quantum, the machines will not be evenly distributed to start with. They will be too expensive to build, power and cool unless you’re a fortune 500 exactly like LLMs right now (aside from small models like llama that can run on consumer hardware). At the moment quantum computers rely on superconductors that have to be cooled near absolute zero which is… somewhat expensive to achieve.
Unlike LLMs (oh no I can’t talk to waifu without cell coverage waah) Not being able to run quantum algorithms on your phone in this scenario would be bad. It either means your personal comms are, for all intents and purposes decryptable by those who control the quantum machines or that you’ll have to pay rent to the people who control quantum machines to have them encrypt and decrypt stuff for you. Of course you’ll have to trust them too. Also, given governments thirst for spying on our encrypted comms, it’s possible that quantum machines are heavily regulated allowing “the good guys” a back door into our chats without giving “the baddies” a way to encrypt their comms
frank@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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
cityboundforest@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
So basically anything not using RSA is fine, which is probably everything these days.
JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 2 weeks ago
Also the largest number ever factorized on a quantum computer (not simulated) is like 30. So this is like 1950’s level of computing(in terms of number of transistors vs qbits) and were 20-30 years of incremental change away from really threatening encryption