Answers.Body: <p>Handwritten digit recognition is a standard benchmark in Machine Learning in the form of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNIST_database">MNIST dataset</a>. For example, <a href="http://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/classification/plot_digits_classification.html">scikit-learn</a>, a python package for Machine Learning uses it as a tutorial example. </p>
  
  <p>The paper you cite uses this standard task as a proof of concept, to show that their system works.</p>
  
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Answers.CreationDate: 2016-08-03T04:41:50.923Z
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Body: <p>This 2014 <a href="https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first-demonstration-of-artificial-intelligence-on-a-quantum-computer-17a6b9d1c5fb" rel="nofollow">article</a> saying that a Chinese team of physicists have trained a quantum computer to recognise handwritten characters.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Why did they have to use a quantum computer</strong> to do that?</p>
  
  <p>Is it just for fun and demonstration, or is it that recognising the handwritten characters is so difficult that standard (non-quantum) computers or algorithms cannot do that?</p>
  
  <p>If standard computers can achieve the same thing, what are the benefits of using quantum computers to do that then over standard methods?</p>
  
Tags: <quantum-computing><handwritten-characters><optical-character-recognition>
Title: What are the challenges for recognising the handwritten characters?
UserDisplayName: kenorb
ThreadText: # What are the challenges for recognising the handwritten characters?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-08-03)
  
  This 2014 [article](https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first-demonstration-of-artificial-intelligence-on-a-quantum-computer-17a6b9d1c5fb) saying that a Chinese team of physicists have trained a quantum computer to recognise handwritten characters.
  
  **Why did they have to use a quantum computer** to do that?
  
  Is it just for fun and demonstration, or is it that recognising the handwritten characters is so difficult that standard (non-quantum) computers or algorithms cannot do that?
  
  If standard computers can achieve the same thing, what are the benefits of using quantum computers to do that then over standard methods?
  
  **Tags:** quantum-computing, handwritten-characters, optical-character-recognition
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2016-08-03. Score: 6 | Accepted answer
  
  Handwritten digit recognition is a standard benchmark in Machine Learning in the form of the [MNIST dataset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNIST_database). For example, [scikit-learn](http://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/classification/plot_digits_classification.html), a python package for Machine Learning uses it as a tutorial example.
  
  The paper you cite uses this standard task as a proof of concept, to show that their system works.
  
  
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