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[Ether_Snake]

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-quantum-future-literally.html

Scientists at the University of Sydney have demonstrated the ability to "see" the future of quantum systems, and used that knowledge to preempt their demise, in a major achievement that could help bring the strange and powerful world of quantum technology closer to reality.

The applications of quantum-enabled technologies are compelling and already demonstrating significant impacts - especially in the realm of sensing and metrology. And the potential to build exceptionally powerful quantum computers using quantum bits, or qubits, is driving investment from the world's largest companies.

However a significant obstacle to building reliable quantum technologies has been the randomisation of quantum systems by their environments, or decoherence, which effectively destroys the useful quantum character.

[...]

Professor Biercuk highlighted the challenges of making predictions in a quantum world: "Humans routinely employ predictive techniques in our daily experience; for instance, when we play tennis we predict where the ball will end up based on observations of the airborne ball," he said.

"This works because the rules that govern how the ball will move, like gravity, are regular and known. But what if the rules changed randomly while the ball was on its way to you? In that case it's next to impossible to predict the future behavior of that ball.

"And yet this situation is exactly what we had to deal with because the disintegration of quantum systems is random. Moreover, in the quantum realm observation erases quantumness, so our team needed to be able to guess how and when the system would randomly break.

"We effectively needed to swing at the randomly moving tennis ball while blindfolded."

The team turned to machine learning for help in keeping their quantum systems - qubits realised in trapped atoms - from breaking.

What might look like random behavior actually contained enough information for a computer program to guess how the system would change in the future. It could then predict the future without direct observation, which would otherwise erase the system's useful characteristics.

The predictions were remarkably accurate, allowing the team to use their guesses preemptively to compensate for the anticipated changes.

Doing this in real time allowed the team to prevent the disintegration of the quantum character, extending the useful lifetime of the qubits.

Great use of machine learning, similar to how you can use machine learning in healthcare to spot potential areas of research by having it look for potential correlations in databanks of health-related information, or in this case figure out the potential mathematical equation behind something that we don't comprehend ourselves yet.

And since I'm a fan of pilot-wave theory, I thought the above was interesting as it could tie into it:

The Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that when two complementary measurements are made, there is a limit to the product of their accuracy. [...] If we make further measurements in order to get more information, we disturb the system and change the trajectory into a new one depending on the measurement setup; therefore, the measurement results are still subject to Heisenberg's uncertainty relation.

In de Broglie–Bohm theory, there is always a matter of fact about the position and momentum of a particle. Each particle has a well-defined trajectory, as well as a wavefunction. Observers have limited knowledge as to what this trajectory is (and thus of the position and momentum). It is the lack of knowledge of the particle's trajectory that accounts for the uncertainty relation.

So the randomness doesn't seem as random as it may have been believed to be, and an advanced AI could figure out the outcome without doing a measurement, potentially proving PWT to be true.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Man, Machine Learning is really the future of everything. Such an obvious application in hindsight and yet completely game changing

 

[LookAtMeGo]

Doing this in real time allowed the team to prevent the disintegration of the quantum character, extending the useful lifetime of the qubits.

This is pretty big eh? IIRC the lifetime of the qubits is a major problem with quantum computing.

Well yeah I guess it says that in the op

However a significant obstacle to building reliable quantum technologies has been the randomisation of quantum systems by their environments, or decoherence, which effectively destroys the useful quantum character

Doh!

And the OP title.... double doh!

 

[Jackpot]

Bit of a stretch to equate machine-learning with "seeing the future".

 

[cpp_is_king]

Bit of a stretch to equate machine-learning with "seeing the future".

The quote was not 'seeing the future', it was '"seeing" the future of quantum systems'

 

[Naked Snake]

Fascinating stuff. Seeing the recent acceleration of advancements in AI and machine learning is very exciting... and at the same time it makes me worry that I'm going to be too old/dead by the time this stuff REALLY takes off. I keep wishing that I was born a few decades later than I was