this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Re: quantum computing, we know quantum advantage is real both for certain classes of problems, e.g. theoretically using Grover's, and experimentally for toy problems like bosonic sampling. It's looking like we're past the threshold where we can do error correction, so now it's a question of scaling. I've never heard anyone discuss a limit on computation per volume as applying to QC. We're down to engineering problems, not physics, same as your brain vs computer case.
From all I know none of the systems that people have built come even close to testing the speedup: Is error correction going to get harder and harder the larger the system is, the more you ask it to compute? It might not be the case but quantum uncertainty is a thing so it's not baseless naysaying, either.
Let me put on my tinfoil hat: Quantum physicists aren't excited to talk about the possibility that the whole thing could be a dead end because that's not how you get to do cool quantum experiments on VC money and it's not like they aren't doing valuable research, it's just that it might be a giant money sink for the VCs which of course is also a net positive. Trying to break the limit might be the only way to test it, and that in turn might actually narrow things down in physics which is itching for experiments which can break the models because we know that they're subtly wrong, just not how, data is needed to narrow things down.
We've already done bosonic sampling that's classically intractable. Google published it a few years ago. So yes, quantum supremacy has already been proven. It's a useless toy problem, but one a classical computer just can't do.
Yes, error correction will get harder the more we scale, but we're pretty sure we've reached the point where we win by throwing more qubits at it. Again, now it's engineering the scaling. No mean feat, it'll take a long time, but it's not like this is all speculation or fraud. The theory is sound