If you are to believe the glossy marketing campaigns about ‘quantum computing’, then we are on the cusp of a computing revolution, yet back in the real world things look a lot less dire. At least if you’re worried about quantum computers (QCs) breaking every single conventional encryption algorithm in use today, because at this point they cannot even factor 21 yet without cheating.
In the article by [Craig Gidney] the basic problem is explained, which comes down to simple exponentials. Specifically the number of quantum gates required to perform factoring increases exponentially, allowing QCs to factor 15 in 2001 with a total of 21 two-qubit entangling gates. Extrapolating from the used circuit, factoring 21 would require 2,405 gates, or 115 times more.
underlying article: https://algassert.com/post/2500
Is it real, or is it a giant financial marketing bubble waiting for its moment to consume the world economy? Let’s watch what happens with the AI bubble to find out.
I don’t think quantum computing is a bubble at all, at least not yet. It’s still firmly in the stage of being explored and understood in a healthy way. I could see it having the possibility of being a bubble, but it would take significant advances in making it more available.
That’s exactly where LLMs/“AI” were about 10 years ago. My point is that after the AI bubble pops, the same idiot techbros have probably already identified new things to latch onto and pump up into a bubble, they’re probably already seeding the ground with it. I can almost guarantee quantum computing will be one of their next “disruptors” that they disrupt ignorant investor’s bank accounts with.
AI is just the currently active grift of these con artists. The grift goes on, and on, and on, it never stops. Quantum computing will have its day. It’s not there yet, but someday it will be.
If you can make a bubble out of crypto and sub-prime mortgages, quantum computing is a doddle, though I’d bet it comes after compute as a service using all those datacentres (some of which will even get built).
Problem is the AI burst is very likely to take out the US economy (and do bad things to the rest of the world), the home of these scams. But I’m sure some shareholder value was ‘created’.
All shall perish in service to the one true God, the Almighty Dollar
Quantum computing is trying to be ai, in the sense that it does have niche scientific uses it excels at but tech bro types want it to be the next general computer so they can make their empire on it. The only use case I’ve seen it excel at so far is generating precisely tailored probability distributions, which end up mostly being useful for simulating different models for quantum field theory. Even then I’ve only seen that in looped fiber implementations, which imo are a stretch on the definition of quantum computer.
I mean, AI is what took the focus away from QC, especially after AlphaFold. Quantum Computing is potentially a society changing technology, now regarding practice we are really far away. The main expectations are in the field of medicine. I work in that field and I reckon that if the expectations placed on quantum computers were to come true, we’d be able to study the human body much quicker than now and to develop drugs much quicker than now. However, I do work nearby a Quantum computing centre and I have met quite a few persons who work in the field, both as researchers and entrepreneurs. Currently no computer can be used to make any real calculations and it is actually unclear if the molecular simulations are actually possible with a quantum computer. As far as I understand it, it may not be possible to encode the whole system in a quantum computer before it loses coherence. This may be an intrinsic limitation as for real problems you’d need to encode tens of thousands of electrons.
If it’s good at probability distributions it probably can be incorporated into finance via Black Scholes or something similar.