Intelligent Quantum Machines?

We studied the perceptron neural model mentioned in this piece.  An early first look at how biological neurons might be built in computers.  Now an indication that quantum computers might be a means to build them efficiently.   Below excerpt from MIT's Technology Review makes the early case.  Article somewhat technical, but readable, with link to tech paper.

Machine learning, meet quantum computing  in Technology Review

An Artificial Neuron Implemented on an Actual Quantum Processor?

Back in 1958, in the earliest days of the computing revolution, the US Office of Naval Research organized a press conference to unveil a device invented by a psychologist named Frank Rosenblatt at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.  Rosenblatt called his device a perceptron, and the New York Times reported that it was “the embryo of an electronic computer that [the Navy] expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself, and be conscious of its existence.”

A perceptron is a single-layer neural network. The deep-learning networks that have generated so much interest in recent years are direct descendants. Although Rosenblatt’s device never achieved its overhyped potential, there is great hope that one of its descendants might.

Today, there is another information processing revolution in its infancy: quantum computing. And that raises an interesting question: is it possible to implement a perceptron on a quantum computer, and if so, how powerful can it be?

Today we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Francesco Tacchino and colleagues at the University of Pavia in Italy. These guys have built the world’s first perceptron implemented on a quantum computer and then put it through its paces on some simple image processing tasks. ... " 

A quantum version of the building block behind neural networks could be exponentially more powerful.   by Emerging Technology from the arXiv  November 16, 2018  Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1811.02266 :