Google says it has developed a kind of quantum computer capable
of identifying objects that appear in digital photos and videos.
According to the company, the system outperforms the classical
algorithms running across its current network of worldwide data
centers. Hartmut Neven, Google technical lead manager for image
recognition, recently unveiled the company’s ongoing quantum
computing work with a post to the company’s research blog,
saying he was due to demonstrate the technology at last week’s
Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Vancouver.
“Many Google services we offer depend on sophisticated
artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning or
pattern recognition,” Neven writes. “If one takes a closer look
at such capabilities one realizes that they often require the
solution of what mathematicians call hard combinatorial
optimization problems. It turns out that solving the hardest of
such problems requires server farms so large that they can never
be built. “A new type of ma