John Preskill presented the Keynote address at Quantum Computing for Business on December 5, 2017. His discussion of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) was also featured on Gizmodo – We’ve Entered a New Era of Quantum Computing, including this excerpt quoting Preskill:
[I]n summary, the NISQ era is simply an age where clunky quantum computers do things that classical computers can’t. These quantum computers still have too many drawbacks to make them revolutionary; as Preskill himself writes, it might be several decades before quantum computers have “transformative effects on society.”
Until then, researchers and companies will continue to find ways to make their qubits more resilient and scale up their computers, mathematicians will keep looking for algorithms where quantum computers show a benefit, and physicists will use these machines to do better simulations. And it’s going to take work to get us into the next era. Preskill concludes:
Quantum technology is rife with exhilarating opportunities, and surely many rousing surprises lie ahead. But the challenges we face are still formidable. All quantumists should appreciate that our field can fulfill its potential only through sustained, inspired effort over decades. If we pay that price, the ultimate rewards will more than vindicate our efforts.
Read the full Gizmodo story here We’ve Entered a New Era of Quantum Computing
Read the Preskill paper Quantum Computing in the NISQ era and beyond https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862