Jiahao Yao

Nilin Abrahamsen, Jiahao Yao

We propose two procedures to create painting styles using models trained only on natural images, providing objective proof that the model is not plagiarizing human art styles. In the first procedure we use the inductive bias from the artistic medium to achieve creative expression. Abstraction is achieved by using a reconstruction loss. The second procedure uses an additional natural image as inspiration to create a new style. These two procedures make it possible to invent new painting styles with no artistic training data. We believe that our approach can help pave the way for the ethical employment of generative AI in art, without infringing upon the originality of human creators.

Jiahao Yao, Haoya Li, Marin Bukov et al.

Variational quantum algorithms stand at the forefront of simulations on near-term and future fault-tolerant quantum devices. While most variational quantum algorithms involve only continuous optimization variables, the representational power of the variational ansatz can sometimes be significantly enhanced by adding certain discrete optimization variables, as is exemplified by the generalized quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). However, the hybrid discrete-continuous optimization problem in the generalized QAOA poses a challenge to the optimization. We propose a new algorithm called MCTS-QAOA, which combines a Monte Carlo tree search method with an improved natural policy gradient solver to optimize the discrete and continuous variables in the quantum circuit, respectively. We find that MCTS-QAOA has excellent noise-resilience properties and outperforms prior algorithms in challenging instances of the generalized QAOA.