Shock, Awe and Dumbfound

When William Shockley and his awesome team announced a transistor back in 1947, essentially an on/off electronic switch, much of the world had been tuning to Marconi's (1874) radios for news. It took five more years to commercialize transistor-based radios. I remember my grandfather's transistor radio blaring in the house. A digital radio came next replacing the transistors even though the latter are more portable and convenient to pack in a limited space for a globetrotter. Why am I reminiscing about this, when an AI can summarize these trivia for anyone curious enough?

The AI you see and experience has gone through similar evolution that is hidden behind the scenes. If you ask AI itself, its evolutionary path you would get a timeline starting with Alan Turing, the father of computers who is famous for his Turing test that discriminates between a human and a computer/AI in a double-blind test.

To be human is to be fallible. The history of humans is replete with this axiom. We have no idea how many glass bulbs Edison broke, before one lit up. King Ashoka though won the Kalinga war, failed in the end by converting to Buddhism and abandoning his kingdom. Much earlier, Lord Krishna failed to bring peace among yadavas and ended his avatar. Lord Rama failed as a husband in taking care of Sita and his children.

Yet we all know success has many friends and try to live up to it fully aware people will take advantage of us. Like fire flies some never learn until the final moment of shock and awe. Is this the reason the ancient rishis of Bharat proposed their theories and left their implementation to the posterity? When we say vedas are infallible, we mean our rishis. If all they did was imagine or hypothesize several situations and predict their outcomes based on an active imagination, they are like a demagogue who runs the country on executive orders because the act of legislation is too hard and time consuming.

We all get bright ideas, but feel like not sharing with anyone lest we should be perceived as coming short of expectations. We all are capable of writing books, especially autobiographies, much easily in our mother tongue, but not everyone is sure about privacy. The Shor's algorithm, for instance, a cornerstone of quantum encryption, if implemented in the future in the quantum computers and made available to one and all, then we can all be sure of keeping our secrets among a few trusted ones and protecting our IP. Until then, we have neither privacy nor patentable ideas.

So you see the survival of human creativity, in one sense, rests on researchers creating a quantum computer, an exercise in futility so far. What the heck is quantum computing you ask? Imagine you buy apples by the dozen but don't feel like consuming them all at once. Then you need a refrigerator to store them. The fridge lowers the temperature and prolongs the life of apples. You can say whatever chemical processes that are taking place internally in the apples, are slowed down in low temps. This also is the principle behind frozen foods, vaccine storage, organ transplant, etc. Thus, a quantum computer is a fridge for electrons.

Having said that, I invite ridicule in the form of "Is an electron then like an apple with life?" Maybe not. However, we can say an electron has consciousness. It is smart enough to know when someone is observing it or trying to measure its attributes. Indeed this is the fundamental basis of quantum physics and Young's double-slit experiment.

From looking around, we note all conscious things are alive. How about plants and microorganisms? Based on your belief system, i.e. a Jain, a Budhist or a biologist, you make your own judgment. Similarly an electron is conscious, by extension, alive!

Going back to quantum computing vs. regular computing, if you take your laptop or desktop and drop it inside a "fridge" whose temperature is lowered to 0 Kelvin, way way below the temperature of ice, then you can see the quantum effect. Perhaps. The major hurdle here is achieving the magic temperature with the current capabilities of thermodynamics. Physicists tell us that at 0 Kelvin the electron has neither spin nor linear motion. That means it can be harnessed for our desired ends such as encryption. But does it have life? Maybe not. It will be like "Jack the boy, all work, no play". Therefore, the end of creativity. It is upto each of us to decide if this is acceptable and worth pursuing.

Regards