Is quantum machine learning gaining momentum?

One of the things I have seen trending around the internet places I visit is related to quantum machine learning. I went over to Google Trends and took a look at the last 12 months and could see a decent volume of people generating related queries. If you were to categorize interest by state, then the top 8 would look like: New Hampshire, Washington, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Texas, and Florida [1]. I’m a little surprised that my research efforts within the last 12 months did not get Colorado on that list of interest by subregion. Apparently, I’m going to need to step up my quantum computing game.

After getting a sense of where in the United States people are interested in quantum machine learning I started to consider what topics are slightly related. That effort is intended to help me understand the edges of the topic and be able to look 360 degrees around the idea being evaluated today. 

The Top 10 related queries would be: 

1. quantum machine learning

2. open source quantum machine learning

3. quantum machine learning solutions

4. quantum machine learning tools

5. quantum machine learning system

6. quantum machine learning software

7. quantum machine learning services

8. quantum machine learning applications

9. free quantum machine learning solutions

10. free quantum machine learning tools

Within the Google trends frameworks they offer another layer of insight beyond the Top 10 related queries. Let’s take a look at that next layer.

The Top 10 rising queries would be: 

1. free cloud based quantum machine learning tools

2. free cloud based quantum machine learning solutions

3. free quantum machine learning tools

4. free quantum machine learning applications

5. free open source quantum machine learning applications

6. free quantum machine learning solutions

7. open source quantum machine learning software

8. free cloud based quantum machine learning software

9. free cloud based quantum machine learning services

10. free open source quantum machine learning tools

To help drill down to some context of how often quantum machine learning really comes up as a topic I ended up comparing machine learning, artificial intelligence, and quantum machine learning [2]. Searches for artificial intelligence are an order of magnitude bigger than searches for quantum machine learning. Overall the searches for machine learning are much larger than quantum machine learning, but still like 20% of the artificial intelligence related volume. 

The interest quantified as searches for artificial intelligence have jumped up incredibly high. That is wholesale due to an employee from Google who is an engineer that works with the technology noting publicly a concern that the AI had become sentient [3]. That disclosure has caused a stir online and in the media. I’m not going to cover the nature of what sentient AI describes in this newsletter. It will certainly be a topic that gets covered in more detail after the dust settles on this one. You can check out the first video in the links and thoughts section below for 20 minutes of coverage on this one from the one and only Yannic Kilcher. I’ll share two links to the Medium platform here, but I’m not going to cover them by naming the engineer [4][5]. I think it is entirely possible that the content from those two links will get pulled down at some point in the not so distant future. Unless all of this was just some sort of weird publicity play from Google to raise awareness about LaMDA. 

Links and thoughts:

“Did Google's LaMDA chatbot just become sentient?”

From CNET, “Why I’m More Excited About the Next UPS Truck Than the Next Tesla”

“The Download: GitHub Achievements, LTT to the Rescue, and Goodbye to an Old Friend”

Top 6 Tweets of the week:

Vox @voxdotcom

@Recode Besides changing termination or retention policies, increasing pay is another obvious lever that Amazon could pull to expand its labor pool. Every dollar added above minimum wage adds 7% more workers to its potential hiring pool, the report found.

vox.comLeaked Amazon memo warns the company is running out of people to hireUnions might not be the tech giant’s biggest labor threat.

Colorado Avalanche @Avalanche

Phewwwwww 🥵 #GoAvsGo

Dr. Nels Lindahl @nelslindahl

My desk is super clean today. I guess that means it is time for a desk picture. This desk is where I spend the majority of my week working on things. #WorkFromHome #desksetup #MonitorUpdates

The Verge @verge

Elon Musk still wants out of his SEC settlement and is appealing the latest ruling theverge.com/2022/6/15/2316…

François Chollet @fchollet

Tech is full of mini-religions, complete with their mythology, dogma, rituals, iconography, and requirement to always maintain faith at all time lest you get excommunicated...

Input @inputmag

We could be in the midst of a "crypto winter" according to the Winklevoss twins who just announced a layoff of 10 percent of their Web3 startup staff.

inputmag.comThe crypto landslide is finally hereIf you “bought the dip” in March, your $1,000 Ethereum investment would now be worth less than $500.

Footnotes:

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F012c1btp 

[2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=machine%20learning,%2Fm%2F0mkz,%2Fm%2F012c1btp 

[3] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105552435/google-ai-sentient 

[4] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 

[5] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-does-it-want-688632134489 

What’s next for The Lindahl Letter?

• Week 77: Is quantum machine learning gaining momentum?

• Week 78: Why is diffusion so popular?

• Week 79: What is GPT-NeoX-20B? Bonus topic: What is XGBoost?

• Week 80: Deep learning Bonus topic: Bayesian optimization

• Week 81: Classic ML algorithms

I’ll try to keep the what’s next list forward looking with at least five weeks of posts in planning or review. If you enjoyed reading this content, then please take a moment and share it with a friend.