So quantum computers are a thing now. What can we do with them?

Puppycow said:
So, no Moore's law for quantum computers?
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It’s a work in progress.

Sycamore is not fault-tolerant and has ~no error correction.

Quite a few groups are working, independently, on how to build/make error correction and fault tolerance in a QC; so far with very limited success AFAIK.

Even with error correction, it’s not at all obvious there will be any significant, feasible scaling.

There’s a lot of hope, hype, etc; there are also a lot of brilliant people working on it, backed by a huge amount of $$$ ....
 
JeanTate said:
I agree.



The actual process can be quite messy and confusing, and good definitions matter. In this particular case, I really like the openness, including Nature’s decision to let the reviewers be known (their choice).



Also, Google isn’t the only player, there are several others, quite independent ... including IBM.
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And the author of the blog has made several corrections based on the comments from his readers. Such closed minds! :D
 
JeanTate said:
It’s certainly widely believed that the Google QC design can be extended to more qubits (60 and 70 are oft mentioned). However, I feel there’s rather too much hope in this ... the physics and engineering that went into Sycamore were heroic, yes the team has some truly brilliant people on it. But the achievement was very hard won, and getting to even 60 qubits will surely be even more heroic. So far, this stuff is NOT scalable.
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260 = 1152921504606846976

For some problems, the effective speed of a quantum computer is an exponential function of the number of qbits, so the benefit of adding more qbits is literally exponential.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
260 = 1152921504606846976

For some problems, the effective speed of a quantum computer is an exponential function of the number of qbits, so the benefit of adding more qbits is literally exponential.
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Yes, and this is a point which Scott repeatedly makes (there are some caveats of course). He will be sure to say that, so far, there's only one problem for which "supremacy" has been clearly demonstrated (running on Google's Sycamore).

But even he was unwilling to even guess when a 60 qubit QC - perhaps a Sycamore descendant? - might be built (and run a similar program).

I feel it's a very exciting time to be around to watch this field develop; it may turn out to be one of great turning points in the history of technology (and engineering and physics and ...), at least comparable to steam power or electricity.
 
Puppycow said:


https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-programmable.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1666-5

They've completed a benchmark test, which shows that it can solve certain problems much faster than the fastest supercomputer. The benchmark test itself is not really practical for anything beyond proving that it works.

I wonder what practical uses this technology will have? I'm sure nobody could really think of much practical applications for early computers either, beyond calculating the trajectories of artillery shells, and stuff like that.

Can it make AI better, I wonder? Could it even lead to sentient AI? Is the AI singularity about to happen?
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Going from past history the main function will be better porn. We'll know QC is a real thing when the first game comes out - perhaps Sims Q?
 
Planigale said:
Going from past history the main function will be better porn. We'll know QC is a real thing when the first game comes out - perhaps Sims Q?
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Well I would consider all the exotic ways to torture Sims on a quantum computer to be a rather dark matter. Personally I would wait for the quantum foam party and schrodingers cat pet expansion packs to come out in a bundle first.
 
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Interesting analysis from an actual scientist:



"The Quantum Hype Bubble Is About To Burst" (Sabine Hossenfelder)

The video description has links to some of the articles and resources mentioned in the video.

The quantum hype cycle, revisited (physicsworld)

The quantum computing bubble (Financial Times)

Quantum Computing Hype is Bad for Science (Professor Victor Galitski via Linkedin)

Crazy headlines abound: "quantum computing will change life as we know it," "quantum computing will solve global warming," "Quantum computing will revolutionize science and industry," etc etc. These statements are not based on any research or reality at all, they are not even wishful thinking. The number of known quantum algorithms, which promise advantage over classical computation, is just a few (and none of them will "solve global warming" for sure). More importantly, exactly zero such algorithms have been demonstrated in practice so far and the gap between what’s needed to realize them and the currently available hardware is huge, and it's not just a question of numbers. There are qualitative challenges with scaling up, which will likely take decades to resolve (if ever).
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