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Google's quantum supremacy is BS, does anyone believe it? It can't do anything besides "not be simulated well".

zozbot234 7y ago
That's not BS, it's literally what "supremacy" means. Usefulness is an entirely different metric. And Google didn't come up with the term "quantum supremacy" (which is a rather awkward phrasing anyway), it was well established in QC research prior to anyone actually claiming it.
- core-questions 7y ago
  It's only an awkward phrase because of what it reminds you of; maybe stop thinking about the bogeyman so much.
meowface 7y ago
It's not BS at all. It proved that they could use a quantum computer to compute something that would be infeasible for a classical computer to solve in a reasonable time frame. That's huge. It's a toy computation, sure, but that's still a major step. It has to be scaled up much more before it can do useful things, and the scaling process is very difficult and costly. But we now have confirmation that the idea is sound.
- core-questions 7y ago
  > It proved that they could use a quantum computer to compute something that would be infeasible for a classical computer to solve in a reasonable time frame. Yeah, but they were basically computing noise, and it's bloody difficult to say that the ability to do that is meaningful enough to have claimed "supremacy" already. It's a huge premature celebration for a team that has had incredible difficulty trying to scale up beyond a tiny number of noisy qubits; like, good for them, but the purpose of this effort really seems to be to make for good water-cooler conversation among the Google execs than it is to actually do useful science.
  - anoncareer0212 7y ago
    You're talking way out of your field, read Aaronson for a good accessible take on why all of what you're saying is wrong
    - core-questions 7y ago
      I've read enough Aaronson to know that he's just too smug of a person for my liking, honestly. It shines through in everything he writes, leaving a nasty sheen on things.

That's not BS, it's literally what "supremacy" means. Usefulness is an entirely different metric. And Google didn't come up with the term "quantum supremacy" (which is a rather awkward phrasing anyway), it was well established in QC research prior to anyone actually claiming it.

core-questions 7y ago
It's only an awkward phrase because of what it reminds you of; maybe stop thinking about the bogeyman so much.

meowface 7y ago

It's not BS at all. It proved that they could use a quantum computer to compute something that would be infeasible for a classical computer to solve in a reasonable time frame. That's huge. It's a toy computation, sure, but that's still a major step. It has to be scaled up much more before it can do useful things, and the scaling process is very difficult and costly. But we now have confirmation that the idea is sound.

core-questions 7y ago
> It proved that they could use a quantum computer to compute something that would be infeasible for a classical computer to solve in a reasonable time frame. Yeah, but they were basically computing noise, and it's bloody difficult to say that the ability to do that is meaningful enough to have claimed "supremacy" already. It's a huge premature celebration for a team that has had incredible difficulty trying to scale up beyond a tiny number of noisy qubits; like, good for them, but the purpose of this effort really seems to be to make for good water-cooler conversation among the Google execs than it is to actually do useful science.
- anoncareer0212 7y ago
  You're talking way out of your field, read Aaronson for a good accessible take on why all of what you're saying is wrong
  - core-questions 7y ago
    I've read enough Aaronson to know that he's just too smug of a person for my liking, honestly. It shines through in everything he writes, leaving a nasty sheen on things.