Google partners with university guru on quantum processor, artificial intelligence tech

Google is working on an extremely fast quantum computer processor that could make computers millions of times faster than they are now.

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence team at Google will be teaming up with University of California Santa Barbara physicist John Martinis and his researchers to "design and build new quantum information processors."

"With an integrated hardware group the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimization and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture," said Hartmut Neven, Director of Engineering at Google.

John Martinis is one of the leading scientists in the field of quantum artificial intelligence. In fact, he recently won the London Prize for his advances in the field. He will now be an employee of both Google as well as UCSB, along with a few members of his team who will also be employed by Google.

This is not the first time Google has partnered with others in the field of quantum computing. Last year the search giant's artificial intelligence lab partnered with NASA to further research into the technology.

Google will continue its partnership with both NASA and D-Wave, a quantum computing company based in Canada. Google's and D-Wave together are experimenting on NASA's "Vesuvius" machine.

"We will continue to collaborate with D-Wave scientists and to experiment with the 'Vesuvius' machine at NASA Ames which will be upgraded to a 1000 qubit 'Washington' processor," continued Neven.

Computers today use binary data, which is expressed in one's and zero's. Quantum computing explores the use of subatomic particles. A number of theorists think that qubits, which is a unit of quantum computing, could express all combinations of bits at the same time, meaning the speed and power of computers would be vastly increased.

Google hopes to one day build "fully reasoning artificial intelligence," however this is still a number of years away. Scientists have been developing the technology for decades.

Despite the incredible advancements that could come with artificial intelligence, some are worried about robots eventually becoming aware enough to want to take over. In fact, DeepMind Technologies co-founder Shane Leg even warned of the technology's role in human extinction.

"Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this," Leg said in an interview.

Google continues to create futuristic technology, with the company also building self-driving cars, weather balloons with WiFi connectivity and robots.

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