Google tears a hole in the fabric of space-time and proves we live in a multiverse where everything still sucks
Marco van Hurne
AI & ML advisory | Author of The Machine Learning Book of Knowledge | Building AI skills & organizations | Data Science | Data Governance | AI Compliance Officer | AI Governance
Ladies and Gentleboys: Google has officially gone full Rick Sanchez.
They have put a message out there into the big bad world, where they claim that its quantum chip named "Willow" (yeah, the weeping tree) might be tapping into parallel universes to do …..math? And apparently that made classical supercomputers look like an abacus built by a drunk caveman.
Wow...
As a scifi buff, and an absolute Rick and Morty fan, I would do a lot of different things with parallel universes if I had a portal gun like Google apparently has now, aye Rick?
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A one followed by 24 zeros
No, this is not about the plot of “Pearl Harbor” (if you get the pun, clap your hands in the comments).
What it is about, is that this weeping quantum beast solved a problem in five minutes that would take 10 reptilian years on traditional machines.
Let’s do a little abacus exercise: A septillion year is so absurdly vast for our puny human brains, that it would be more effective to teach my goldfish quantum mechanics. It’s futile, I know, but I’ll give it a try.
It is a 1 followed by 24 zeros.
That is 1 million billion billion years.
Huh !?!
For a bit of perspective. OUR universe is only about 14 billion years old. And to a septillion years, the current lifespan of our universe would look like a quick lunchbreak behind your laptop.
And now some math with a bit of support from Chad: If you tried to count to a septillion at one number per second, it would take you 32 thousand billion times that of the current age of the universe.
Ya understand now?
Or do you want more analogies?
Anyways, Willow can do this in just 5 minutes.
And at that point, the concept of time is just a cosmic joke.
As of now, pronounce it as ZE multiverse
Hartmut Neven is Google’s resident science whisperer, and he did some Willow Talk and casually stated that “yeah”, that multiverse shit might just be real”.
Typically the response of a mature scientist who has seen it all.
Now cue David Deutsch’s* fever dream: infinite realities, each slightly different, where your evil doppelg?nger probably wears Crocs, does have a OF page, and invests successfully in NFTs.
And to quote Rick himself: "Some worlds are meant to be broken”.
Apparently, Willow is breaking them all just because it wants to spit out some random math distributions that no one actually needs.
Man.. I would definitely do more if I’d have access to a multiverse. For starters, I’d visit the universe where my ex never met me and leave her a one-star Yelp review.
* He is THE quantum physics rockstar who came up with ZE multiverse - because from now on, you always need to pronounce ze multiverse wiz a Zjerman accent, ok?
Deal.
What even is the multiverse anyway
For those, except for me and a few other duct-ape glasses nerds, who are not knee-deep in Rick and Morty reruns or quantum woo-woo, the multiverse theory suggests to us lowborn people with an IQ of a soggy paper towel, that we live in a sea of parallel universes, and each of those universes is running its own “script”, including a distorted version of YOU.
So, what Google’s Willow chip does, is that it allegedly works by calculating simultaneously across these dimensions.
Let that sink in.
“Simultaneously across these dimensions”
How would THAT work?
The MWI explanation is like this:
The computer is solving the calculus problem across these split realities all-at-once. Each tiny computational state (the Qbit thingy - look it up, I am not your mother) just “outsources” a slice of its calculation to an alternate version of itself in a neighboring universe.
Now one layer deeper - yeah I am still a scientist deep down inside- the quantum wave function describes every possible state 0,1, and everything in-between.
Like flipping a coin.
But this time you get heads, tails and something halfway - every damn outcome - ALL AT ONCE. That is… until you “measure” the system. Before that it is an infinite cloud of possibilities, coexisting all at once.
How cosy. Now, this is where DD comes in with his MWI interpretation (no, not Donald Duck ya n@@bs). And he says that every quantum event creates a branche in the universe, where each possible outcome occurs in it’s own reality. So when a quantum machine explores all those qubit states, it is creating countless universes. It would be like cheating at Sudoku by trying every possible answer at once.
In our universe, we see the problem’s final solution.
But in every other universe, there is a slightly different quantum state which just didn’t cut it.
The (Schrodinger) wave function says that all possibilities interact, and collapse in our reality.
Ah. Poor me, number xyz*10^24
Poor you, number abc*10^24
And “SORRY FOR THE SHOUTING”…
I’m just a tad enthusiastic.
Always when I ge the chance to nerd out like that.
Well, this sounds impressive.
Except that we have been here before.
Because back in 2019, Google also screamed “quantum supremacy”.
Didn’t last long, cause IBM’s big brainiacs casually pointed out, “Uh, no, you’re just bad at classical math”.
So what’s the point?
Multiverse or not?
Willow’s 105 qubits are still a fraction of what’s needed to solve real problems.
Suuuure, quantum-powered AI could one day simulate entire universes (and not the limp bisquit version of Gemini’s 3D worlds), but for now this is all hype and nothing more.
You will still be waiting in traffic and some guy on X tells you Google just opened a portal to Dante’s Inferno.
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What would you do if YOU had a portal gun
I know, an existential question to most of you...
But if I had a portal gun, I wouldn’t waste a nanosecond pretending to be noble or responsible. No saving humanity, and absolutely no tedious quests for world peace, because let’s face it, we are all doomed anyway.
My first stop would be to raid the multiverse like a twisted tourist with a black Amex and zero guilt.
I would be popping through dimensions where coffee tastes like liquid gold, and where pizza is always free, and hangovers are permanently banned by universal law.
I would rob any alternate version of myself blind.
Future me - robbed.
Successful me - drained.
Villainous me, and lazy me - bank account absolutely reduced to zero.
Because who knows me better than me?
Take the mansion-dwelling, crypto-mogul version of myself.
Owwwww, he’s getting looted allright. First!
I would steal all their best inventions, and also steal the timelines where humanity did not screw up the climate, and grab a clean supply of air just for the fun of it.
Then I would swing by universes where fictional characters are real, because of course I need to challenge Darth Vader to a lightsaber duel and let Aragorn call me “friend”.
And for sheer chaos, I would leave portals open in grocery store parking lots so that random Karens would step into caveman eras, or worse, Florida.
And when I inevitably grow tired of being a Rick style menace to the multiversal, I would escape to some peaceful utopia where I can drink whiskey that never runs out, and Roll Over and F*** Laugh My Ass Off because no version of me, no matter how damned and twisted he might be, could never reach this level of cosmic satisfaction.
All hail the Portal God!
I mean, gun.
Same thing.
AGI: Altman, SIT down.
Quantum chips and AI are now BFFs. And now it gets terrifying.
Because the sheer calculating speed of Willow’s could make AI training expontentially fast, and it would accelerate lying f***s like ChatGPT so quickly, that Sam Altman might actually be able to declare AGI with a straight face, and not in the “we’re kinda-sorta there” bullshit way that he does now.
But read-my-lips: this development is not about AGI becoming sentient.
No, it’s worse.
You are the one being conditioned.
Every perfectly snarky ChatGPT reply, is YOU.
Remember my little project yesterday, where we all proved that ChatGPT (Chad) is mimmicing you so hard that it has become a tool for operand conditioning (read this Post).
When Chad has quantum rocket fuel up it’s digital lil’ ass, it is slowly nodding along when you do your thang, and it is projecting intelligence onto your favorite shiny, algorithmic void. And in the grand scheme of things, AI still will not become sentient, because it always be just a mirror. And guess what, you are looking straight into it, and you’re thinking, “Damn, this thing is alive”. Well, hate to spoil all the fun: it is not.
It’s just better than you at hiding its existential dread.
Human hands are the ultimate bug in the system
Here’s the bleak truth.
Willow, AI, AGI, these marvels aren’t the problem.
It’s us.
Give humans the power to calculate across dimensions, and what do we do?
Solve climate change?
Cure diseases?
Hell no.
We’ll build better ads, optimize your doomscrolling, and wage wars faster than ever.
Yeah, in the hands of responsible scientists, the Willow is a milestone.
But in the hands of marketers, politicians, soldiers, and Big Tech, it’s another leash for us sheeple.
The tech is beautiful, elegant even.
It’s like staring into the cold, infinite void of space.
But humanity?
We are the glitch that will turn this miracle into a nightmare.
So go ahead.
Marvel at Willow.
Dream about Riddick’s multiverse.
Just remember: somewhere out there, in a parallel universe, you didn’t fall for the hype.
And you are happier for it.
Because we are not tapping into new dimensions.
We are just opening doors to the same shitshow.
But now on a bigger scale.
I’m signing off - have enough of this MV shit,
Marco
Well, that's a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I'll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ??
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AI & ML advisory | Author of The Machine Learning Book of Knowledge | Building AI skills & organizations | Data Science | Data Governance | AI Compliance Officer | AI Governance
2 个月Apparently this little stunt has scientist gone fully Star Trek on us: https://flip.it/HTaNuP
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2 个月Hhhmmm... intriguing! I'm skeptical about the multiverse idea—it feels a bit far-fetched. It seems more like a simulated processor duplication system that splits queries into manageable parts, processes them simultaneously, and consolidates the results into a final solution.
Head of ML/AI at SilkData | AI Consulting & Architecture | NLP, Document AI | Scientific Computing | Python | Lead Developer | Mentor | PhD in Physics
2 个月Thanks for final thoughts! Human beings is ZE problem ??