The advent of the next generation of computing power, though not yet fully harnessed, creates some very real implications for the non-computer scientists that may be interesting.
- How might quantum computing (QC) enable data security for financial and other institutions?
- How will QC become a threat to data privacy and integrity via more powerful hacking capability?
- Does QC ultimately empower or threaten blockchain and crypto?
- How can we leverage QC to build more informed, realistic risk scenarios?
From the article...
"The recent Google paper illustrates the point. They used a device with 53 qubits (the quantum analogues of a classical computer’s bits), and they report that it took just minutes to perform quantum computations that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers thousands of years. Assuming it’s true, this is a remarkable achievement in experimental physics and a testament to the brisk pace of progress in quantum computing hardware; I offer my hearty congratulations to everyone involved."
The Google team has apparently demonstrated that it’s now possible to build a quantum machine that’s large enough and accurate enough to solve a problem we could not solve before, heralding the onset of the NISQ era. Where do we go from here? Naturally, Google and other hardware builders hope to find practical applications for their quantum devices. A much larger quantum computer might help researchers design new materials and chemical compounds or build better tools for machine learning, but a noisy quantum computer with a few hundred qubits might not be capable of anything useful. Still, we have ideas about how to use NISQ computers that we’re eager to try, which might yield better methods for optimization or more accurate physical simulations, but we’re not sure if any of these will pan out.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-i-coined-the-term-quantum-supremacy/
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