Is Quantum Computing the answer?

Don’t worry, I’m not leading you down this particular rabbit hole as I haven’t got a clue about quantum computing either. But Will Lockett does, and his predictions about the AI bubble are pretty spot on:

‘So, it’s essentially common knowledge that the AI bubble is ripe for bursting. Things like the efficient compute frontier (read more here) and the Floridi conjecture (read more here) mean that the AI models we have now are about as good as they will ever be. Even if OpenAI spent trillions of dollars increasing the size of their models tenfold, they would only be slightly better. The recent release of ChatGPT-5 is a perfect example of this. It had significantly more data, training, and cash shoved into it than its little brother ChatGPT-4, yet it is only marginally better than ChatGPT-4.’

https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/the-ai-bubble-is-about-to-burst-but?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

To head off the inevitable ‘pop’, Lockett thinks the Tech Bros are already hyping quantum computing as the solution to all of AI’s problems. Unfortunately, quantum computing is still a long way off replacing current supercomputers and may never be useful in AI:

‘Remember how, when you open the box of Schrodinger’s cat, you fix its superposition as either dead or alive? This is known as collapsing the quantum wave function. Well, when you read a qubit, you do the same, and by fixing its state, it makes it just like a regular computer, either a one or a zero, which renders this entire exponential computational thing moot. Instead, the computer needs to run an algorithm that uses quantum wave interference to whittle down the qubits to the useful ones before reading; that way, when we do read it, we get a useful answer and can harness this exponential computing power.’

https://open.substack.com/pub/planetearthandbeyond/p/the-ai-bubble-is-about-to-burst-but?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Will we ever have quantum computers running everything? Maybe. But there will be a number of very painful, and expensive, missteps before we get there. I strongly recommend reading Lockett’s article in full as it’s written in a style that even non-geeks can understand. And the subject matter will affect us all, even if we don’t use AI.

cheers,
Meeks