Search engine Google has decided that it wants to get into the business of working out if cats are potentially alive or dead.
It has created a research team led by physicist John Martinis from the University of California Santa Barbara to build new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics.
Dubbed the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, the whole thing is a collaboration between Google, NASA Ames Research Centre and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) to study the application of quantum optimisation related to artificial intelligence.
The idea is that by having an integrated hardware group, the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimisation and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture.
It will also be able to have someone who can feed and stroke the cats, which may or may not be alive.
Google has become more interested in artificial intelligence in recent years, probably because human intelligence seems to be suffering in the US as the nation stops teaching science in favour of a theory that someone’s invisible friend created the universe 6,000 years ago.
In January, Google bought privately held artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies, which says it all, really.
