The January 30, Physics Today Review Quantum computing advances spur excitement and confusion:Media anticipation heightens, but informed voices counsel patience features recent discussion by John Preskill. This includes his January arXiv paper “Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond,” which is based on his keynote address at December’s Quantum Computing for Business conference in Silicon Valley.
Photograph of superconducting circuit with nine qubits (Photo credit: Julian Kelly) from Nature volume 519, pages 66–69 (05 March 2015) doi:10.1038/nature14270
(From Physics Today) Preskill says that a third of a century ago, Feynman was envisioning quantum computing. Now media observers are excitedly expecting quantum computers’ practical advent.
Voices like Preskill’s are calling for moderating the enthusiasm, but industry is stoking it. Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and others have announced substantial progress, causing a wave of coverage. TechCrunch.com proclaimed that the “quantum computing apocalypse is imminent.” A Fox News headline trumpeted computing’s “mind-blowing future.” At Futurism it was “Quantum computing is going to change the world.”
Read the full Physics Today article here
