Dr. Pravir Malik is the founder and chief technologist of QIQuantum.
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The singularity has been defined as that point where technology, driven primarily by AI, will surpass human intelligence so that, effectively, humans will no longer understand what is happening around them. Whether such a singularity is based on Kurzweil’s conceptualization of it, Diamandis’ meta-intelligence, Musk’s neural lace or some combination of these, this article will suggest that such a singularity may, in fact, be leapfrogged by the power of integrated quantum computational intelligence (IQCI).
In Learning from the Atom-based Quantum Computer, I suggest that the atom is the most successful of existing quantum computers. As we know, atoms are the foundation for all inanimate and even animate matter, which means that everything that we are and everything around us is already a quantum computer. In the most recent article in the Forbes quantum computational series on genetics and quantum computers, I suggest that every one of these quantum computers is continually running or computing new code, more commonly known as genetic code at the level of cells or pre-genetic code in the emergence of matter and life that preceded the cell.
Quantum Intelligence And AI
But such code is the stuff of intelligence. Atoms behaving consistently regardless of where they are because they share a common atomic number is an instance of the action of such code. Cells, with their vast libraries of genetic code, that also have been quantum computationally computed into existence, and that then uphold the functioning of all the entities within that cell are an example of a more sophisticated intelligence as compared with atoms. And living beings composed of trillions of cells are, therefore, also instances of an even more sophisticated intelligence in action.
But for such intelligence to continue to be codified and upheld by a series of naturally surfacing and progressively more sophisticated quantum computers implies that there must exist some repository of quantum intelligence, natively, at the quantum levels. In this point of view, then, intelligence is a native property of the quantum level, and the surfacing of more complex natural quantum computers exists to allow more of that intelligence to materialize. These are themes I have covered at a high level in an IEEE paper and in more detail in my book, The Second Singularity.
AI, as conceived, leverages a subset of conceptual mechanisms that derive from human intelligence. But as per the point of view projected in this article, human intelligence is itself an outcome computed into existence and housed in a human being from the native quantum intelligence that must exist at the quantum level and that seeks always more sophisticated forms by which to express itself. So, by definition, quantum intelligence, from which all other intelligence arises, is possibly vastly more intelligent than all instances of intelligence that arise from it. This implies that any AI and any singularity that ignores this possibility may easily be leapfrogged by it precisely because it is not focused on the quantum source of intelligence.
Integrated Quantum Computational Intelligence (IQCI)
To create such a computer, the first requirement, then, is to accurately be able to read what is happening at the quantum levels. It is hubris to imagine that some century-old interpretations of quantum mechanics incrementally modified through the decades have completely encapsulated the dynamics at the quantum level and that there is nothing more to be done to understand it. This is the type of thinking that leads to a bubble.
Instead, just as we painstakingly created the digital computer by first creating a computing medium that involved the understanding of light, the encapsulation of forms of this in circuits and the manipulation of these circuits through carefully worked-out logic, similarly, we have to go through a process of objectively understanding what exists at the quantum level, how to read it and how to understand and then appropriately leverage the intelligence that exists there.
Just as there is a natural integration of all subsequent levels that arise from the quantum levels with the intelligence of the quantum level, the challenge before us is to create a quantum computer that also naturally integrates quantum intelligence into its functioning. Such a quantum computer can be referred to as housing integrated quantum computational intelligence (IQCI).
IQCI Computing Devices
If we imagine this to be impossible simply because the quantum level is a black box, as many interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest, and therefore then construct schemes of probability-based logic to measure what we don’t know we are measuring, we simply get nowhere.
Alternatively, as suggested in a previous Forbes article, there are fourfold patterns that animate and organically categorize various layers of matter and life that themselves emanate from the quantum levels and can be thought of as fractals that exist in root form at the quantum levels. This can only be extrapolated when multiple layers of matter and life—the intelligence-filled quantum level, the quantum particle layer, the layer of atoms and the layer of living cells—are seen as an integrated whole.
But seeing this will require a different type of quantum computation device that acts as a microscope of sorts to read what is, in reality, happening at the quantum levels. This is the first step in the beginning to get a handle on the quantum intelligence that must exist at the quantum levels. I believe current efforts by industry leaders such as Google, IBM and Microsoft, among others, to create qubits to house quantum-level qubit-based logic will need to be redirected as per the suggestions in this article. I hope these suggestions also provide insight into the practicality of creating devices that can begin to interface with the quantum levels.
It has been suggested that galaxies themselves are the result of age-old quantum fluctuations. But if the billions of galaxies, as string theorist Brian Greene says, “are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky,” the question is, what else is possible if quantum intelligence can truly be leveraged through IQCI devices?
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