When I first heard of “quantum supremacy” I thought of military applications of quantum technologies. But quantum supremacy means that quantum computers can do certain things much faster than conventional computers.

So much faster, in fact, to reach “the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t.” This is likely to have military applications indeed!

In fact, quantum computing promises dramatic speedups over conventional computing for specific applications. Not slightly faster computing, but way faster, like thousands or even millions of times faster.

Google has achieved quantum supremacy with a quantum processor that solved in about 3 minutes a computational problem that, according to Google’s analysis, would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years.

My story on quantum supremacy, with background, short explanations and links, is published by Thrivous, the human enhancement company.

Competitors in the race to quantum supremacy have praised Google’s achievement, but tried to minimize it’s importance. IBM posted a commentary and a draft research paper, suggesting that the speedup obtained by Google is not as dramatic as claimed. Intel pointed out that the road to operational quantum computing is still long: “The race to commercially-viable quantum computing is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Of course, not all competitors are in the US. According to Chinese technologists, quantum computing “could lead to breakthroughs and applications in fields such as machine learning in the near future,” as reported by South China Morning Post. Chinese researchers are following in the footsteps of Google and plan to achieve quantum supremacy by the end of next year.

It wouldn’t be wise to underestimate China, which has deep pockets and has demonstrated the ability to accomplish spectacular high technology feats. A Chinese research team uploaded its own paper to coincide with Google’s quantum supremacy announcement, notes IEEE Spectrum.

In an interview, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai explained that the most exciting applications of future quantum computers could target Artificial Intelligence (AI):

“I think AI can accelerate quantum computing and quantum computing can accelerate AI.”

Consciousness and mind uploading

In my quantum supremacy story I argue that quantum computers could produce and reproduce consciousness. If quantum phenomena are essential to consciousness, classical computers could not “run” conscious AIs and human uploads (that is, human minds “copied” from biological brains to computers). But perhaps some quantum computers could.

I suspect that quantum physics is, indeed, central to the mystery of consciousness [*], and suitable quantum computers could be able to exploit the same quantum phenomena that give rise to human consciousness. These quantum computers would be able to “run” conscious AIs and human uploads.

Meanwhile in the far future: Technological resurrection

I am persuaded that future God-like entities in the universe (hopefully including our descendants) will be able to resurrect us [*] by copying us from their past (our present) and uploading us to their present (our future).

It seems easy: Digital information can be copied from one computer to another. If your mind is equivalent to a computer, they’ll just have to find a way to copy your mind from the past and upload it to the future. Nothing here that ultra-advanced, God-like entities could not do.

This is somewhat equivalent to the Christian idea of resurrection. I am equating super-hyper-advanced humans or aliens with God, but perhaps this is not entirely wrong. Or, if “they” can conceivably do all that, so can God.

But wait a sec. What if “you” are encoded in the exact quantum state of your brain? By “exact quantum state” I mean, not something similar to, not a compressed version of, but the real thing. If so, you are quantum information, and the “no-cloning theorem” says that quantum information can’t be copied.

Does the no-cloning theorem apply to you and me? The authors of “It Keeps Me Seeking: The Invitation from Science, Philosophy and Religion” (see my review) say:

“If it does, then the type of copying process invoked by science-fiction writers, when they imagine that people could one day save ‘backup’ copies of themselves, may be physically impossible. We already know that each person is unique. It may be also that each person is intensely fragile.”

I (and most mind uploading experts and enthusiasts) have always assumed that the exact quantum state of the brain (or parts of it) is not needed for mind uploading: A highly compressed classical version with all and only the essential digital information will do. But I could be wrong, in which case the no-cloning theorem would make mind uploading impossible.

But quantum teleportation comes to the rescue!

“The no-cloning theorem does not prevent a quantum state being passed on from one physical embodiment to another, as long as the first embodiment loses the state when the other one gains it. One way this can happen is through a process known as quantum teleportation.”

See “Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation,” by Anton Zeilinger, for accessible but precise explanations of the no-cloning theorem and quantum teleportation, written by a pioneer of the field. See also “Quantum Computing since Democritus,” by Scott Aaronson.

Known (and experimentally confirmed) quantum teleportation schemes allow to teleport a unit of quantum information (qubit) X as follows: Two experimenters (call them Alice and Bob as usual) have two entangled qubits A and B. Alice entangles X with A, destroys X with a measurement, and sends the results of the measurement to Bob over a classical channel.

Now Bob, using the classical information sent by Alice, knows how to measure B in such a way that B becomes identical to X. And here you go! X has been teleported from Alice to Bob.

If ER=EPR, the entangled connection between A and B can be seen as a wormhole that teleports X. Scientists are investigating quantum teleportation for things more complex than qubits. The road from a qubit to a person is still (very) long, but our first baby steps with qubits are encouraging. Teleporting quantum information destroys the original, but isn’t that what happens at the moment of death? Perhaps…

In his delightful short book “Technological Resurrection” (see my review), Jonathan Jones also argues that consciousness can only be teleported (moved, not copied) to the future. The authors of “It Keeps Me Seeking” conclude: