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It's really a shame that popular media made Shor's algorithm the pinnacle of quantum computing. After 3 years in the industry, I've yet to meet a single scienti

It's really a shame that popular media made Shor's algorithm the pinnacle of quantum computing. After 3 years in the industry, I've yet to meet a single scientist, engineer, or organization who's truly interested or does active research in implementing Shor's algorithm. Even Grover's algorithm is more "popular", there are actual demos and small prototypes. But neither are actually the focus of the majority of active development. It's as if the whole world would believe, for some reason, that the goal of AI is to produce punk songs in Farsi, and every news article about AI would be filled with comments "but can it make Farsi punk yet?" Not to downplay the importance of Shor's algorithm, but it's just weird.

deleted 2y ago
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l33tman 2y ago
Maybe that says more about the QC field than pop media though? Shor's algorithm truly implies both an algorithmic and practical breakthrough (if possible to implement, the small if). But what other algos are there? It's this, quantum fourier transform, and Grover's like you say. What else can be cool and useful? What is the bulk of the active development, except error correction codes? What should someone start with now if they just enter the QC field?
- freetonik 2y ago
  One of the most interesting fields are not algorithms in this common sense, but optimization problems and reliable simulations of quantum systems. For example, certain car manufacturers are investing in on-premise quantum computers not because they want to break encryption or compute timetables, but because they want to develop novel electric batteries, and it's difficult unless you can simulate materials, chemical interactions, etc. Similar motivations exist in pharma (developing drugs), agriculture (developing additives, pesticides, etc.). Another field is quantum sensing, from highly scientific (detecting particles/matter/etc.), to highly down-to-earth (e.g. military). Some properties of QCs can be used to improve the precision of quantum clocks. There are so many exciting fields and applications, where progress is made and will be made before general purpose QC is developed on which you'd run Shor's and Grover's (if ever, in our lifetime). The truth is that QCs are best at niche unique applications related to quantum mechanics, and not so good at general-purpose computing. Sure, pop media is not the source, it's being fed by industry spokespeople, who are ultimately concerned about funding. Many people in the industry do believe that quantum winter is coming. But it's kind of a self-destructive cycle: to continue progress we need funding, to get funding we make promises, to make them efficiently the industry gravitates towards easy-to-blow-your-mind topics like breaking encryption or solving traveling salesman, but chances are we won't have a QC capable of practically useful Shor in the decade or two at best, and by that time funding may decrease significantly because, well, "we can't Shor yet". Examples like PsiQuantum raising almost 1B from partially public sources, and then delaying their ambitious plans does not help anybody. If they fail, the general public and the policymakers would, again, confirm their suspicions that "QCs are a scam".
sampo 2y ago
> After 3 years in the industry, I've yet to meet a single scientist, engineer, or organization who's truly interested or does active research in implementing Shor's algorithm. This is because the current state of the art is still very far away from programmable quantum computers. There is lots of work ahead on improving the error rate of individual quantum logic gates, before we can even begin to dream about building computers from the gates. There also seems to be a large gap between how little current or near-future quantum computers can do (= nothing useful), compared to what the general public thinks they will soon be able to do.

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l33tman 2y ago

Maybe that says more about the QC field than pop media though? Shor's algorithm truly implies both an algorithmic and practical breakthrough (if possible to implement, the small if). But what other algos are there? It's this, quantum fourier transform, and Grover's like you say. What else can be cool and useful? What is the bulk of the active development, except error correction codes? What should someone start with now if they just enter the QC field?

freetonik 2y ago
One of the most interesting fields are not algorithms in this common sense, but optimization problems and reliable simulations of quantum systems. For example, certain car manufacturers are investing in on-premise quantum computers not because they want to break encryption or compute timetables, but because they want to develop novel electric batteries, and it's difficult unless you can simulate materials, chemical interactions, etc. Similar motivations exist in pharma (developing drugs), agriculture (developing additives, pesticides, etc.). Another field is quantum sensing, from highly scientific (detecting particles/matter/etc.), to highly down-to-earth (e.g. military). Some properties of QCs can be used to improve the precision of quantum clocks. There are so many exciting fields and applications, where progress is made and will be made before general purpose QC is developed on which you'd run Shor's and Grover's (if ever, in our lifetime). The truth is that QCs are best at niche unique applications related to quantum mechanics, and not so good at general-purpose computing. Sure, pop media is not the source, it's being fed by industry spokespeople, who are ultimately concerned about funding. Many people in the industry do believe that quantum winter is coming. But it's kind of a self-destructive cycle: to continue progress we need funding, to get funding we make promises, to make them efficiently the industry gravitates towards easy-to-blow-your-mind topics like breaking encryption or solving traveling salesman, but chances are we won't have a QC capable of practically useful Shor in the decade or two at best, and by that time funding may decrease significantly because, well, "we can't Shor yet". Examples like PsiQuantum raising almost 1B from partially public sources, and then delaying their ambitious plans does not help anybody. If they fail, the general public and the policymakers would, again, confirm their suspicions that "QCs are a scam".

sampo 2y ago

> After 3 years in the industry, I've yet to meet a single scientist, engineer, or organization who's truly interested or does active research in implementing Shor's algorithm. This is because the current state of the art is still very far away from programmable quantum computers. There is lots of work ahead on improving the error rate of individual quantum logic gates, before we can even begin to dream about building computers from the gates. There also seems to be a large gap between how little current or near-future quantum computers can do (= nothing useful), compared to what the general public thinks they will soon be able to do.