this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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Personally I find quantum computers really impressive, and they havent been given its righteous hype.

I know they won't be something everyone has in their house but it will greatly improve some services.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

Pretty much on the blue line. They cost a lot of money for being barely functional, and it’s not clear whether they’ll ever be anything more

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Schrödinger's tech. It's both real and flimflam at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

We're in the "grifters collecting donations" phase for the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Quantum computers have no place in typical consumer technology, its practical applications are super high level STEM research and cryptography. Beyond being cool to conceptualize why would there be hype around quantum computers from the perspective of most average people who can barely figure out how to post on social media or send an email?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (5 children)

...and cryptography.

I think I'm a typical consumer, and if I'm not mistaken we use cryptography constantly (https and banking, off the top of my head). If quantum computers are important for cryptography, it's hard to imagine "regular people" having no use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Cryptography is most of the hype I’ve heard. It’s usually something along the lines of imagine all encryption/certificates being breakable instantly

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

People thought the same of binary computers in their development phase.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, why would a farmer need a fancy calculator the size of a room? 🙄

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think we're still headed up the peak of inflated expectations. Quantum computing may be better at a category of problems that do a significant amount of math on a small amount of data. Traditional computing is likely to stay better at anything that requires a large amount of input data, or a large amount of output data, or only uses a small amount of math to transform the inputs to the outputs.

Anything you do with SQL, spreadsheets, images, music and video, and basically anything involved in rendering is pretty much untouchable. On the other hand, a limited number of use cases (cryptography, cryptocurrencies, maybe even AI/ML) might be much cheaper and fasrer with a quantum computer. There are possible military applications, so countries with big militaries are spending until they know whether that's a weakness or not. If it turns out they can't do any of the things that looked possible from the expectation peak, the whole industry will fizzle.

As for my opinion, comparing QC to early silicon computers is very misleading, because early computers improved by becoming way smaller. QC is far closer to the minimum possible size already, so there won't be a comparable, "then grow the circuit size by a factor of ten million" step. I think they probably can't do anything world shaking.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

As for my opinion, comparing QC to early silicon computers is very misleading, because early computers improved by becoming way smaller. QC is far closer to the minimum possible size already, so there won’t be a comparable

Thanks for saying this. I see a lot of people who assume all technology always gets better all the time. Truth is, things do have limits, and sometimes things hit a dead end and never get better than they are. Those things tend to get stuck in the lab and you never hear about them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

sometimes things hit a dead end and never get better

Ah, that’s when it’s time to start charging a monthly subscription fee of course!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Inflated Expectations. Most people who are aware of them will still talk about how they're going to destroy crypto. We are very, very far off from the size of QC that could possibly do that. It may not even be feasible to do the quantum juggling act necessary to handle that many qbits. It primarily effects public key crypto, with relatively minor effects on block ciphers and hashes. Plus, we already have post-quantum crypto making its way into TLS and other cryptographic suites.

And don't get me started on the morons who think the NSA already has some super secret breakthrough QC that can already break all crypto. Often from the same sorts of people who (correctly) throw Russell's Teapot at creationists.

Meanwhile, there are far more interesting possibilities that don't need so many qbits. Things like improving logistics or molecular simulation.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Quantum computers have already had its hype, so plateau of productivity. It’s just that the plateau is really low.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

This is the equivalent of saying AI already had its hype because Isaac Asimov was popular.

People are aware of the term quantum computer and basically nothing else. We're a decade pre-hype at least. Only a small handful of specialists are investing in it.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Quantum Computing is still climbing the slope from TT to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. There is still little to no major hype, as its still in "R&D/testing" it is slow, it is expensive (Very) limited due to all the surrounding tech required to make it work like cooling, containment etc..

Compare this to AI.

AI is at and heading down from the Peak towards the Trough of Disillusionment. It was easy (relatively) to implement, easy to evolve as how nVidia did, simply throw more silicon at it. The Hype was easy to generate because even while totally misinformed, media and other people out there thought they could easily sell it. Even though most of what they claimed was turd, it sounded amazing and a game changer even in the early stages, and businesses lapped it up. Now they are feeling the pain, and seeing that there are still major hurdles to get past.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

AI is way different. It’s more like a series of hills where Sysiphus is pushing the boulder up to the peak, only to see another higher peak as the boulder rolls down the slope of disillusionment.

The thing is that quite a few things initially called AI have climbed that hype curve, rolled down into disillusionment, and quite a few have climbed back to a plateau of increased productivity. Each time we realize that’s either not AI or only a step toward AI. We’ve gotten a lot of useful functionality but the actual progress seems to be mainly clarifying what intelligence is or is not

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

considering that no one who isn't involved in the creation of them is talking about quantum computing in regards to quarterly profits or posting about it on LinkedIn trying to score a lead, it may be as far left on the chart as possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The kind of LLM that caused this hype with GPT3 is in R&D since the 60's. I belive we're in the 70's of Quantum Coputing. When It'll be measured, it'd be just as easy and relatively cheep to produce and advance as AI today

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

QC is likely to remain the domain of liquid nitrogen-cooled machines for a long time to come, possibly forever. I can run a basic LLM on a Raspberry Pi--and I have--but it's highly unlikely QC will ever be that easy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Btw: What a quantum computer can reliably do these days, is tell you 21 is 3 x 7. And it takes hours and quite some traditional computing to do that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_records#Records_for_efforts_by_quantum_computers

We've progressed a bit further than that. But for anyone interested in actual applications for quantum computers... They'll have to wait. It's research at this point. We're making progress one step at a time. But so far no one has even demostrated we're able to scale those computers to a useful size.

So I'd say we're somewhere close to the origin of the axes. Or on a different graph for research that's still science fiction. Together with nuclear fusion power plants, thorium cars, space ships and hypothetical battery chemistry that'll make our electric cars go 5000 miles and not degrade over time.

[Edit: The Wikipedia Article: Quantum comuting also has some good references.]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What exactly is holding QC back right now? Does it require near room-temp superconductivity to become viable or is it just in research phase right now?

I remember that AI/ML was held back mainly because of compute power to price ratio.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

There are a few different physical systems that people are trying to build quantum computers with. Superconducting loops are one of the most promising ones, because of a halfway decent decoherence rate. And yeah, superconducts needing near 0K temperature to operate is a problem. It's just hard to scale up while everything needs to be so cold. Room-temp superconductivity would be a huge advantage.

But even then, the decoherence rates are still too high for any long quantum computation. Last I heard, the best qubits are maybe barely getting to good enough errors rates that quantum error correction would be possible - which is great, but 'possible' and 'practical' still have a significant gap between them.

So in short, basically everything about the hardware needs to be better; and its just very very hard. Probably too hard to ever achieve the dream of having arbitrary quantum computation. (But there is always the possibility of some big new idea that makes everything work better.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That's not entirely true. There are companies right now with prototypes solving real world problems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does these "companies" includes the one that were outed for just doing computation on plain old processors and claiming they had made huge breakthrough in quantum computing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Not the one I was thinking about. Sandbox AQ is the one that came to mind.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you have a concrete example I'd love to hear it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Sandbox AQ is one I've heard about. Pretty sure they are at least at the prototype stage.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Approaching the point of disillusionment.

They started to work, but hardly anyone cares. They are still far from being good, or affordable.

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