Technology

40509 readers

263 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

rs5th@beehaw.org

coldredlight@beehaw.org

SemioticStandard@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

remington@beehaw.org

255

'It's going to be really bad': Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley (www.bbc.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by along_the_road@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's how it's been explained to me by laymen many many times. Just casually (ish, I have a math degree) looking at the math, chatting with a friend who is a quantum physicist, being involved with computers, etc I find that Grover's Algorithm is not at all capable of something like that. I'm not sure there's anything better in terms of breaking encryption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm

Grover's algorithm could brute-force a 128-bit symmetric cryptographic key in roughly 264 iterations, or a 256-bit key in roughly 2128 iterations. It may not be the case that Grover's algorithm poses a significantly increased risk to encryption over existing classical algorithms, however.[4]

I am stoked for what it could do for protein folding, or other heavy simulation work, but in terms of proper encryption I don't believe it actually will change much.

[–] valgarf@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The typical example is Shor's algorithm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

It allows to efficiently find the prime factors of an integer - a problem without a known polynomial algorithm on a classical computer.

This would directly break RSA encryption, as it relies on factorisation being difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_cryptosystem

However, there are encryption algorithms that are considered safe even against a quantum computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

[–] JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Also the largest number ever factorized on a quantum computer (not simulated) is like 30. So this is like 1950's level of computing(in terms of number of transistors vs qbits) and we're 20-30 years of incremental change away from really threatening encryption

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's fair, Shor's algorithm would probably break a bunch of older encryption. It's a little further out of reach, in terms of feasibility but who knows how fast it could speed up

[–] cityboundforest@beehaw.org 2 points 3 days ago

So basically anything not using RSA is fine, which is probably everything these days.