Geordie Rose: Machine Learning is Progressing Faster Than You Think

Dr. Geordie Rose is a founder and Chief Technology Officer at D-Wave Computers. I met Geordie at the IdeaCity conference in Toronto where he made an impassioned presentation about D-Wave and quantum computing. Needless to say, as soon as Dr. Rose stoped speaking I rushed to ask him for an interview. As it turns out Geordie is already a fan of Singularity 1 on 1 and isntantly said that he would be happy to do it. As a father of three kids and the CTO of a trail-blazing quantum computing company, Dr. Rose is a very busy person. Yet somehow he was generous beyond measure in giving me over two hours for an interview with the apparent desire to address as many of mine and the audience’s questions as possible. During our conversation with Geordie Rose we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: how wrestling competitively created an opportunity for him to discover Quantum Mechanics; why he decided to become an entrepreneur building computers at the edge of science and technology; what the name D-wave stands for; what is a quantum computer; why fabrication tech is the greatest limiting factor towards commoditizing quantum computing; hardware specs and interesting details around Vesuvius – D-Wave’s latest model, and the kinds of problems it can compute; Rose’s Law as the quantum computer version of Moore’s Law; how D-wave resolves the de-coherence/interference problem; the traditional von Neumann architecture behind classical computer design and why D-Wave had to move beyond it; Vesuvius’ computational power as compared to similarly priced classical super-computers and the inherent difficulties in accurate bench-marking; Eric Ladizinski’s qubit and the velodrome metaphor used to describe it; the skepticism among numerous scientists as to whether D-Wave really makes quantum computers or not; whether Geordie feels occasionally like Charles Babbage trying to build his difference engine; his prediction that quantum computers will help us create AI by 2029; whether the brain is more like a classical or quantum computer; how you can apply for programming time on the two D-wave quantum computers; his take on the technological singularity… My three favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Geordie Rose are: “Think about the Long Term and don’t pay all that much attention to the issues of the day.” “Machine learning is progressing faster than you think and will become more broadly available on shorter timescales than you might have hoped.” “Becoming involved is not impossible! “