QCI, millionways match Reservoir Quantum Computing with AI
Quantum Computing Inc (QCI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with AI company millionways, under which the two companies will explore the benefits of combining QCI’s Reservoir Quantum Computing (RQC) machine learning technology with millionways’ AI algorithms.
“This is the first joint commercial application of our reservoir computing technology. Over the past few months, we have done lots of internal tests on our systems, which has built our confidence in the opportunity of transforming the world of AI with quantum,” stated QCI CEO Robert Liscouski. “The market is already familiar with what ChatGPT and other AI algorithms can do with classical computers. Using our unique quantum photonic hardware tailored to accelerate AI applications by addressing existing and emerging challenges such as power consumption, cost of systems, demands on training data sizes, and processing speed, we hope to greatly contribute to the growing interest and demand of AI. If we progress as we expect, we should be in the market with a commercialized application or product by year end 2023, if not sooner.”
A QCI press release explained at length what reservoir computing is and how quantum can help:
“Reservoir computing is a type of machine learning technique that uses a fixed, random ‘reservoir’ of interconnected nodes to perform computations on input data. The reservoir is a complex dynamical system that has a high-dimensional state space and exhibits nonlinear and chaotic behavior. The input data is fed into the reservoir, which transforms it in a non-linear way, and the output is obtained by reading out a linear combination of the reservoir’s states. The key advantage of reservoir computing is that the reservoir can be pre-trained using simple random connections and then used as a fixed feature extractor for a wide range of tasks. Reservoir computing has been successfully applied to a variety of applications, including time-series prediction, speech recognition, image and video processing, and control systems. However, there are limitations to classical reservoir computing, particularly in training the computer, which can take a long time and require a lot of energy.
Quantum reservoir computing is a variation of classical reservoir computing that uses quantum-mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement principles, to create quantum-boosted neural networks. Quantum reservoir computing has a number of significant advantages over classical reservoir computing with, namely, increased connectivity and capacity, decreased training bias, and strengthened security. The photonic systems at QCI also deliver additional benefits of high energy-efficiency, versatility, and scalability.”
QCI’s RQC can process audio files and enable the emotional intelligence to directly process a whole new medium of voice, creating applications that will expand AI into useful business and personal consumer uses. This could help create a breakthrough for millionways’ emotionally-intelligent platform, which aims to provide feedback to users based on their emotional IQ and personality insights, but is currently text-based. Adding a voice dimension can allow emotionally-intelligent AI to be continuously fed with speech entries like a diary, recognizing patterns and unconscious moods within speech and returns individual personality analysis to the user based on science and empathy.
QCI and New York City-based millionways companies said that if their initial proof-of-concept is successful, they will develop a joint marketing and business development plan to pursue commercial opportunities. Results of that project are expected to be published mid-year.
Dr. Yuping Huang, QCI Chief Quantum Scientist stated, “From the beginning, we have strategically focused all our development efforts on quantum photonics, fully appreciating all the significant advantages over other methodologies and platforms. We hope to take advantage of cutting-edge photonic hardware which is well suited to handling quantum data processing and thereby, a significant cost and time savings. QCI’s near term strategic plan is to make our RQC commercially available for the AI community to use and explore many different applications.”
Martin Cordsmeier, CEO of millionways, added, “We enthusiastically look forward to team up with QCI to demonstrate how our advanced AI capabilities will benefit from quantum information technologies. millionways has a number of practical capabilities already in the marketplace such as our Emotionally Intelligent AI that helps companies build the right team and develop a strong culture with highly motivated employees using our text-based personality analytics platform… QCI’s Reservoir Quantum Computer, with its ability to process audio files, will add an incredible dimension to our AI platform and open completely new markets to allow users to interact with voice rather than typing text. Imagine the applications: everything from entertainment to medicine to ensuring that people have someone to talk to when they need to communicate. Elderly users who are isolated and alone would benefit greatly.”
