Oxford Physicist Unloads on Quantum Computing Industry

Disclaimer: I used to work in quantum computer hardware development until earlier this year.

I didn't read the Financial Times article because it is pay-walled, but some of the things that Oxford Physicist said are not completely on the level. For instance, the comment, "[quantum computers are] so error-prone that any information one tries to process with them will almost instantly degenerate into noise". I would say this is not really true already and increasingly likely to be entirely false in the future... Quantinuum's trapped-ion QC's have high enough fidelity to run basic error correcting codes such that the logical qubits have higher fidelity than physical qubits, which also continue to improve in fidelity. IonQ, IBM, and others continue to make major strides in qubit fidelity, which is to say "major strides in reducing and controlling noise in the hardware system."

Is there too much hype in quantum computing? Yes. Some companies are over-hyping their progress or possibly lying. Other companies are reserved and honest. I think the same has happened in many high-risk, high-reward fields of exploration... especially when venture capital is involved.

Is developing fault-tolerant quantum computing systems incredibly challenging? Yes. The so-called "war on error" is protracted struggle with numerous fronts and theaters of action.

Will we be able to develop useful quantum computing systems? I'm not sure but there is no clear physics that shows it is impossible... although some physicists feel otherwise. But solid progress continues to be made by many companies.

Overall, I think the large R&D push in QC is a net positive. We may develop useful QC systems. Scientific history is full of smart people who said something was impossible only to have it happen years later. Our understanding continues to evolve. i think it is far too early to throw in the towel.

QC hardware requirements are also funding and pushing developments in many fields: laser systems, real-time embedded hardware, digital-analog circuits, vibration control, electromagnetic shielding, cryogenic systems, applied mathematics, and so many other application specific areas, as well. A lot of good advances in these disciplines are being funded by QC R&D.

It will be interesting to see a retrospective on the similarities and differences between the hype bubble "deep technologies" of the last decade, ie Blockchain, AI, and quantum computing.

"AI" (as ML) has proven, if unglamorous, business uses, but as a business buzzword spun up a basically parallel and unrelated world of business interest based on what some laypeople ("business translators") imagined it was.

Quantum computing certainly is less mature from an experimental perspective, more mature (than AI) from a pure theory perspective, which makes it interesting because we know what we could do with it if theoretical results were physically realizeable, it's just not clear how close we are to actually getting there. As a long term research bet it seems on the most solid foundation, but the near term business case is less clear.

And blockchain, other than a theoretically interesting underlying concept, has morphed completely into hype/scam territory, and progress in ways of suckering "investors" and avoiding securities laws have completely overshadowed any theoretical advances (zero knowledge proofs as an example, maybe). All the while nobody has actually demonstrated a real thing you would do with a blockchain.

My god. Even with DNS adblocker that site is a minefield of awful ads. Don’t even bother going to the site. Not enough content to justify the wall of misery.