Quantum computers: amazing progress, but probably false supremacy claims

My level of expertise on quantum computing is low.

The announce of the imminent advent of the Quantum Computer seems to be recurring every few months these last few years because it's a moving target.

HN recently featured an article about a supposed quantum-only algorithm being applied to normal computing. Algorithms are a vastly larger space to explore than general computing paradigms.

Computer hardware is still advancing forward in performance even though single-threaded performance is stalling in relation.

We're moving away from general computing, this is always happening, but the current environments are pushing us back towards transputers. There's a place for special purpose quantum hardware, but right now the money is in making the most general quantum cpus possible(D-wave being an exception because annealing has many uses where it excels.)

I'm not an expert. But a lot of quantum mechanics has to do with things being unknown or completely different until they are measured or observed.

It's possible that there is no way to get useful data from quantum phenomena as anything happening on that level is unknowable by it's very nature.

As a licensed quantum computologist (um... not really, but I do work for a major QC effort)... your skepticism is not misplaced.

I can only speak for my place of work (not publicly) and pass along scuttlebutt... but, my understanding is that it's largely the same everywhere. Some efforts have tight budgets, some have billions backing them; but QC research is hugely expensive with more unknowns than knowns. People giving out the cash want results sooner than later. At my workplace, the researchers are in a continual pitched battle with management to keep a rein on marketing, limit expectations, etc., and it's a major distraction. When management misunderstands an early result, and oversells it to their superiors (if not the press!), suddenly they think it's appropriate to make "Quantum Supremacy" a task with a 6-month deadline.

It all makes me want to crawl into a box and take a nap.

At the moment the problem of superseding ordinary computers still looks like one of technical/engineering nature. If achieving this is not possible even in principle it could lead to some new developments.

There are some people considering/working on superdeterminism as a possible interpretation of quantum mechanics (the idea that everything, every outcome of an measurement is predetermined by the universe in such a way for us not to gain the complete information about the quantum system. I would not like to discourage anyone, but in fact this would be a conspiracy theory on a cosmic scale. In some discussion on physics stackexchange it was pointed out by Peter Shor that if it were true we wouldn't be able to achieve quantum supremacy.

You are right - most physicists believe that quantum supremacy is possible, and if we discover that in fact it is not, then we'll need to understand why.