In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy [1]. I'm truly confused about what quantum computing can do today, or what it's likely to be able to do in the next decade.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/technology/computing/google-and-nasa-ac...
The most similar comparison is AI stuff, except even that has found some practical applications. Unlike AI, there isn't really much practicality for quantum computers right now beyond bumping up your h-index
Well, maybe there is one. As a joke with some friends after a particularly bad string of natural 1's in D&D, I used IBM's free tier (IIRC it's 10 minutes per month) and wrote a dice roller to achieve maximum randomness.
Sorry for that, but seriously, I'd treat this kind of claim like any other putative breakthrough (room-temperature superconductors spring to mind), until it's independently verified it's worthless. The punishment for crying wolf is minimal and by the time you're shown to be bullshitting the headlines have moved on.
The other method, of course, is to just obsessively check Scott Aaronson's blog.
The computer *did not* produce the same results each time, and often the results were wrong. The service provider's support staff didn't help -- their response was effectively "oh shucks."
We discontinued considering quantum computing after that. Not suitable for our use-case.
Maybe quantum computing would be applicable if you were trying to crack encryption, wherein getting the right result once is helpful regardless of how many wrong answers you get in the process.
Though it looks like he recently switched to working at Google AI...
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaxMJzQAAAAJ&hl=en
pm90•1h ago