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The quantum computing bubble

ft.com

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Re: The quantum computing bubble

#101

Post by mattnewport »

dilyevsky wrote: post #95
mattnewport wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is fusion is known to be possible - the sun and hydrogen bombs. Quantum Computing lacks equivalent existence proofs. There's a lot of abstract theory but no real indication it is possible to scale up in the real physical world to useful problem sizes and reasons to doubt that it is possible.

Neither of those are contained fusion. I think gp is implying that it might be impossible to have net energy gain for contained fusion (which currently seems to be the case even with most advanced designs)

Contained fusion might be impossible but I don't think we have anything as suggestive that quantum computing is possible as we do for fusion.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#102

Post by dgudkov »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55
aqme28 wrote: post #48

I don't understand this argument at all. Of course it isn't making money yet-- that's because it's an early technology that is still being researched. Sure it might never mature, but it seems crazy to call it a "bubble" or to analyze it based on current sales figures.

It's not actually early technology, it's been developed since the 80's. And if the underlying theories are unsound - if it doesn't even work in theory - then putting more money in won't make it magically viable.

Doesn't the same apply to nuclear fusion power generation?

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#103

Post by dr_dshiv »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #68
mdorazio wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to get your information from places other than Wikipedia. The vacuum tube was invented in 1904 and entered mass production by RCA in 1920 after several rounds of improvements. D-Wave started demonstrating its QC product in 2009 and here we are 13 years later with basically nothing. Are you going to tell us that QC will be commercially viable in three years?

It's honestly just a really bad analogy. Evacuated tubes were not pursued en-masse as an end unto themselves the way quantum computing is being pursued. Their development was as a side fascination for a handful of researchers or they were advanced because they were directly applicable to some goal of a researcher with maybe some mild tweaking. They were not a moonshot and they developed along similar lines as most us…

To clarify the analogy:

Quantum computing with todays technology :: Classical computing in the early era of vacuum tubes

The point of the analogy is to communicate that we are at an early stage of development. Also, I just like vacuum tubes.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#104

Post by kvathupo »

Frankly, the article reads as if the author has an axe to grind.

On utility, there's more than just Shor's: unstructured search [1], finance ([2], [3]). Even if quantum computers ultimately prove unfruitful commercially, that doesn't render it a useless endeavor. Like String Theory, it can beget findings in other areas, regardless of whether you can profit from them: novel classical recommendation algorithms ([4]), quantum algorithms for SAT that could possibly help automated theorem proving ([5]).

Part of the difficulty of quantum computing is that to show speedup, you need to find complexity bounds on classical problems whose runtime is actively being researched, e.g. neural networks ([6]).

As for their financial worthwhileness, while there is valid concern ([7], [8]), it's far too early to tell: it's hardware, not software. Also, it's my understanding that private investment is much larger than public funding in the US for quantum computing, both of which pale in comparison to China's investment. Thus, I wouldn't want to see investors shy away if the government is unwilling to make up the difference!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm

[2] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.02666

[3] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08040

[4] - https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3880

[5] - https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/36428/do-any-qu...

[6] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01198

[7] - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/topological...

[8] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.03137

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#105

Post by solveit »

sfpotter wrote: post #62
aqme28 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't? The article leads with that argument. "The reality is that none of these companies — or any other quantum computing firm, for that matter — are actually earning any real money." I don't see any argument that the technology is fundamentally unsound or doesn't scale, even though that's an argument I'm pretty amenable to.

"The simple reason for this is that despite years of effort nobody has yet come close to building a quantum machine that is actually capable of solving practical problems. The current devices are so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise. The problem only grows worse if the computer is scaled up (ie, the number of “qubits” increased)." + 5 subsequen…

The current mainstream view is that QC is a very hard but tractable engineering problem. There is no fundamental reason for quantum error-correction to not work, and a demonstration that it cannot would be a major and surprising breakthrough in fundamental physics. This has been our state of understanding for a couple of decades now, and the progress we have been seeing is consistent with this view.

To be clear, there are people making sophisticated arguments for fundamental barriers to quantum computation. For instance, the quantum-skeptical mathematician Gil Kalai writes about his thoughts on recent progress on QC at (https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2022/05/26/waging-war-on-quan...). His view is considerably more nuanced than this FT article, and much more conducive to learning and discussion. I hope you take the time to read it, and I think I'll submit this to HN main as well.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#106

Post by alpineidyll3 »

I'll get downvoted into oblivion for this, but literally most of my old academic friends are in on this grift, old advisors own some of the largest enterprises in this 'sector', and all all these people (in private) regard quantum computing as a money grab. At best as a way to fund research.

And that's it! The author of this article is 100% right. Markets are fully aware though, go ahead and try to short any publicly traded QC stock lol. You can't. There's no shares to borrow and no liquidity on puts....

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#107

Post by aqme28 »

sfpotter wrote: post #62
aqme28 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't? The article leads with that argument. "The reality is that none of these companies — or any other quantum computing firm, for that matter — are actually earning any real money." I don't see any argument that the technology is fundamentally unsound or doesn't scale, even though that's an argument I'm pretty amenable to.

"The simple reason for this is that despite years of effort nobody has yet come close to building a quantum machine that is actually capable of solving practical problems. The current devices are so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise. The problem only grows worse if the computer is scaled up (ie, the number of “qubits” increased)." + 5 subsequen…

It argues that QC is not currently viable. I don’t see an argument that it will never be viable, which is what “fundamentally unsound” means.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#108

Post by quantum42 »

quantum42 wrote: post #94

The article must be written someone who is not an expert in this field, or an expert who is suppressing information to disinform with his conclusion. I say this because: 1. They say nothing about the breakthroughs in quantum error correction that is allowing IBM to promise a leap from 89 qubits today to 4,000 qubits in 2025 (still not enough on its own for a cryptographically relevant quantum computer - CRQC0, runnin…

No post body was provided.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#109

Post by packetlost »

solveit wrote: post #105
sfpotter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The simple reason for this is that despite years of effort nobody has yet come close to building a quantum machine that is actually capable of solving practical problems. The current devices are so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise. The problem only grows worse if the computer is scaled up (ie, the number of “qubits” increased)." + 5 subsequen…

The current mainstream view is that QC is a very hard but tractable engineering problem. There is no fundamental reason for quantum error-correction to not work, and a demonstration that it cannot would be a major and surprising breakthrough in fundamental physics. This has been our state of understanding for a couple of decades now, and the progress we have been seeing is consistent with this view. To be clear, ther…

As someone working in QC control systems, this holds up with my experience. We're fundamentally dealing with tough engineering problems, primarily on the hardware side of things. To be clear, these systems are very complex and rely on a multitude of software and hardware working, and working well. I'm of course biased, but I lean towards a positive outlook on QC.

Re: The quantum computing bubble

#110

Post by sweezyjeezy »

marcosdumay wrote: post #88
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key word being 'if' - cited research from the FT article that disclaims this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.02199.pdf I have no expertise in QC/chemistry so I can't make a judgement other than to say it doesn't seem universally agreed that QC will be a silver bullet here.

That's quite similar to claiming that quantum computers won't change anything for RSA cryptography, because we never had any proof that integer factorization can't be done in polynomial time on a classical computer. It's true, in some sense.

The paper also shows that the proposed QC strategy for calculating energy levels - where you start with a guess and then optimise - may not lead to exponential speedup on a large class of important chemicals, because just coming up with an appropriate initial guess has no polynomial time algorithm at present. So it's not clear for what class of chemicals this would even theoretically become a tractable calculation.
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