Google announces a turning point in quantum computing

Summary

The era of quantum computing may have begun not with a flashy press conference, but with an Internet leak. According to an article published briefly – and probably wrongly – on a NASA lab website, Google physicists used a quantum computer to perform a calculation that would crush the world's best conventional supercomputer. Although abstruse computing has no known uses, the result means that scientists have taken a long-overdue step known as "quantum supremacy". The Google computer does not have the ability to correct errors, which can be essential to create a full quantum computer. And many researchers worry that after all the hype surrounding quantum supremacy, quantum computing may experience a slowdown like the one that undermined the artificial intelligence of the 1970s to the present decade when the technology has finally caught up with its aspirations. In the document that leaked, however, the 76 authors conclude: "We are only a creative algorithm from valuable applications in the short term".