Quantum Computing, AI, and Bitcoin — Blockonomics Sits down with Scot Forshaw, Co-Founder of…

Quantum Computing, AI, and Bitcoin — Blockonomics Sits Down with Scot Forshaw, Co-Founder of Toridion

Scot Forshaw is the Co-Founder and Lead Developer at Toridion, where they are working hard to advance Quantam Computing, AI, and apply it to everyday things include ForEx/Crypto Exchanges. They also use Blockonomics to Accept Bitcoin. I had the opportunity to sit down with him and discuss a bit of his work. A video of the interview is here, but also check out what he has written below:

Can you give us a brief explanation of Toridion?

Toridion is primarily focused on information processing. We have proprietary machine learning and data storage layers that function on a quantum simulation stack. We have no interest in general purpose quantum, that's for someone else. Instead we develop specific purpose algorithms and solutions for specific use cases that work either wholly on simulation or as part of a hybrid quantum analog system. The focus is on deliverable solutions now, not in 10 years. Our aim is to be enablers not vendors.

What motivated you to start the Toridion project and get involved in Quantum computing?

The realization that no matter how much silicon you throw at machine learning, there is a ceiling. Back in 2014, people thought that AI was on an unstoppable trajectory, but as IBM and MIT recently demonstrated, the amount of bare metal required to push some kinds of ML applications even a few percent further is in the order of 5 magnitudes! I wanted to redesign the way we thought about data and information in general by embarking on a reverse engineering of what information is. That is how we arrived were we are today.

What is unique about your solution and what challenges did you face while building Toridion?

I flipped QC on its head and instead looked at what general purpose QC would be expected to do. The answer is not much outside of some fairly specialized use cases. Of those application cases, search, storage and security seemed to be the low hanging fruit. The Toridion approach was to re engineer the data in such a way as the computational element was part of the actual storage approach. The result is a data format that is still very hard for normal computers to handle (but not impossible). However, the computationally hard aspects were designed in such a way as to be more easily solvable by something called a quantum analog process. This approach involves finding naturally occurring phenomena and physical systems that solve certain equations as a feature of their fundamental makeup. (gravity or electron flow are two such things that just work, without any appreciable loss of energy or time). By building a processor that can be used to outsource the math required to manipulate our data storage format to a natural system, we can feasibly reduce processing overheads to almost zero in some application cases.

How can Quantum computing change aspects of our world?

Go fish.. Do I think it’s going to be breaking SHA256 ? maybe not — there are many reasons that the effort is more a vanity project than useful. I’d like to think its going to help us develop better medicines and such, but of more, or certainly equal importance is the preservation of knowledge, information and literature, art and such. We loose context all to often and the meanings of things get lost surprisingly easily. Quantum Memory systems may help us store information in more meaningful ways, in ways that future AI systems will be able to access to deliver much more intuitive and creative versions of AI. AI with free thought is my goal. Some people are scared by that, I think that says ore about the person than the technology. Machines with free will… yeah that's cool!

What are your thoughts on the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem? How does advances in quantum computing affect the future of bitcoin?

There’s a lot of talk about hash breaking. I think its relevant but ultimately not going to break the world. I think the mining energy crisis is the most likely beneficiary of quantum technology in the mid term. It pains me to think of the waste we are making mining crypto, QC surely has answers here. Who knows QKCD quantum key distribution may be an early alternative to consensus driven ledgers.

What are your plans/roadmap for the future?

Right now the focus is on our finance analytics platform. It’s early days, but we know it has the horsepower to dominate. There is a serious lack of honest and transparent analytics and signal services. I wanted to change that. Toridion Finance is the beginning of a steady investment in building out what I want to be the simplest and most accurate crypto and forex analytics platform in the world. The aim is high .. I think it has to be. On the ML front we continue to develop our neural network technology and although on the bench, our CPU prototypes are making progress. I mentioned that ultimately we want to be enablers not vendors. Right now we have to show what might be possible with technology people don’t readily understand. That’s hard but we are getting there.

Anything else you want to add (Promotions/Coupon Code for our readers)?

Blockonomics seemed the best way to integrate payments with our API. I’d love to be able to offer a discount for your readers. Until Dec 24th your readers can follow the link to get 30% on all our plans including our self service web app.

Did you enjoy this? Also check out our snippets of our video interview for more fascinating stuff:

Are you Scared of AI?

How can Quantum Computing help Bitcoin Mining?

How can you Predict the Price of Bitcoin?