Oversize #11: Quantum computing moves closer to tackling complex, real-world problems

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Editor's note: Last year, Google announced that the company’s AI division had achieved ‘quantum supremacy’, with calculations more than 3 million times faster than those of Summit, widely considered the world’s fastest computer. Quantum supremacy has been a goal that scientists have been working towards since the 1980s. It refers to a demonstrable advantage of quantum computing over classical computers. Many, like the famous and accomplished mathematician Gil Kalai, have even doubted whether quantum supremacy will ever be achieved and reasoned that it was a mirage. Google’s breakthrough implied that these new kinds of quantum computers would be able to perform calculations at speeds that are inconceivable with today’s technology in any feasible amount of time. (Although the claim of quantum supremacy was largely academic, IBM—the makers of Summit—dismissed it and accused Google of not tapping the full power of the supercomputer to rig the race.) Scientists likened Google’s announcement to the Wright brothers’ first plane flight in 1903—proof that something is really possible even though it may be years before it can fulfil its potential. But let us back up a …