4 ms·

Quantum computing has been 10 years away for the last 30 years.

bawolff 3y ago
I don't think that is true, i imagine most people thought it was much more than 10 years away 30 years ago. I think 30 years ago people still weren't sure if it was physically possible at all. In the mean time real progress has been made. If we continue at this rate (big if) we will eventually have quantum computers. Just not tomorrow.
- api 3y ago
  I think it’ll be like AI: perpetually 50 years away until some big discovery is made and everyone stops laughing. For AI it was the “attention is all you need” paper. I’ve been told that for QC it might be error correction that scales but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s true. I expect that nuclear fusion will follow the same trajectory of being 50 years away until it’s suddenly 0 years away. The reality for all these is that steady progress is constantly being made but isn’t visible outside experts in the field. Then it reaches a critical mass and you have the “chatgpt moment.”
  - bawolff 3y ago
    > QC it might be error correction that scales but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s true "Error correction that scales" is basically what the definition of a working quantum computer. That is less the breakthrough needed so much as what the breakthrough would lead to.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Comparing to AI doesn't look so good for QC. The research that led up to the attention paper has a consistent trend of producing lots of useful applications for its 60-year history. You may not remember this, but in 2012 there was a computer vision "watershed moment" around the CNN architecture. Before that, there was the DARPA autonomous driving challenge and related research in robotics. Going back further, there have been many other big breakthroughs in ML/AI with immediate application, down to the perceptrons of the 60's and hidden markov models of the 70's. In other words, the field that eventually became AI was pretty much immediately useful. The relative lack of useful intermediate results raises major red flags for me, but it doesn't seem that physicists are all that bothered by it. Indeed, the high energy theorists have been at it for longer with a lot less to show for their work: At least we have a few toy quantum computers, while there is still nothing testable about string theory. Honestly, I hate to say this, but I think it's going to take a major war for QC to have its watershed moment (a "Manhattan project"), and I think the odds are that it will actually work if it comes to that. However, the window is kind of closing on the usefulness of the technology as post-quantum encryption starts to get legs, and I don't really want another World War 2...
- hcks 3y ago
  I’m curious, what “real progress” did QC make since the 90s?
  - bawolff 3y ago
    While they said 30 years ago, so since 1993? On the theoretical side shor's algorithm was invented 29 years ago, which is what started the hype in the first place. 30 years ago is 1 year before anyone really cared. Late 90s early 2000s you start to see progress on quantum error correction, which is key progress neccessary to make this all work theoretically Starting Mid-2000s you start to see toy realization proof of concepts (devices with a few qubits). Thdy aren't very useful but realizing a physical device is the first step to doing anything at all. These keep getting better and better. Early 2020s you start to see devices that can perform computation, that well not particularly useful, are complex enough that they would require a super computer to do clasically. This in my opinion is quantum computer's "hello world" moment in my opinion. Writing a hello world program is still very far off from say writing the linux kernel, but its the step where things get real. Like most things in science, most of this is not zOMG breakthrough, but small gains compounding over time to create real progress.

I don't think that is true, i imagine most people thought it was much more than 10 years away 30 years ago. I think 30 years ago people still weren't sure if it was physically possible at all. In the mean time real progress has been made. If we continue at this rate (big if) we will eventually have quantum computers. Just not tomorrow.

api 3y ago
I think it’ll be like AI: perpetually 50 years away until some big discovery is made and everyone stops laughing. For AI it was the “attention is all you need” paper. I’ve been told that for QC it might be error correction that scales but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s true. I expect that nuclear fusion will follow the same trajectory of being 50 years away until it’s suddenly 0 years away. The reality for all these is that steady progress is constantly being made but isn’t visible outside experts in the field. Then it reaches a critical mass and you have the “chatgpt moment.”
- bawolff 3y ago
  > QC it might be error correction that scales but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s true "Error correction that scales" is basically what the definition of a working quantum computer. That is less the breakthrough needed so much as what the breakthrough would lead to.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Comparing to AI doesn't look so good for QC. The research that led up to the attention paper has a consistent trend of producing lots of useful applications for its 60-year history. You may not remember this, but in 2012 there was a computer vision "watershed moment" around the CNN architecture. Before that, there was the DARPA autonomous driving challenge and related research in robotics. Going back further, there have been many other big breakthroughs in ML/AI with immediate application, down to the perceptrons of the 60's and hidden markov models of the 70's. In other words, the field that eventually became AI was pretty much immediately useful. The relative lack of useful intermediate results raises major red flags for me, but it doesn't seem that physicists are all that bothered by it. Indeed, the high energy theorists have been at it for longer with a lot less to show for their work: At least we have a few toy quantum computers, while there is still nothing testable about string theory. Honestly, I hate to say this, but I think it's going to take a major war for QC to have its watershed moment (a "Manhattan project"), and I think the odds are that it will actually work if it comes to that. However, the window is kind of closing on the usefulness of the technology as post-quantum encryption starts to get legs, and I don't really want another World War 2...
hcks 3y ago
I’m curious, what “real progress” did QC make since the 90s?
- bawolff 3y ago
  While they said 30 years ago, so since 1993? On the theoretical side shor's algorithm was invented 29 years ago, which is what started the hype in the first place. 30 years ago is 1 year before anyone really cared. Late 90s early 2000s you start to see progress on quantum error correction, which is key progress neccessary to make this all work theoretically Starting Mid-2000s you start to see toy realization proof of concepts (devices with a few qubits). Thdy aren't very useful but realizing a physical device is the first step to doing anything at all. These keep getting better and better. Early 2020s you start to see devices that can perform computation, that well not particularly useful, are complex enough that they would require a super computer to do clasically. This in my opinion is quantum computer's "hello world" moment in my opinion. Writing a hello world program is still very far off from say writing the linux kernel, but its the step where things get real. Like most things in science, most of this is not zOMG breakthrough, but small gains compounding over time to create real progress.