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What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet (theverge.com) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the quantum-leaps dept.
The Verge argues that researchers "have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it's just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public's imagination."

And there are predictions that quantum computers will finally do something useful as soon as 2028: The drama can overshadow the real progress in quantum computing... Researchers have improved the qubits themselves, so they hold onto information longer. When they hold onto information longer, you can fit in more operations and do more complicated algorithms. Last November, Andrew Houck of Princeton University and his colleagues reported that they'd made a superconducting qubit that can hold onto information three times longer than the previous record holder... And in the last two years, researchers have made substantial strides in what's known as quantum error correction... In addition, researchers have developed algorithms to correct errors while the quantum computer operates... Microsoft claimed, which experts dispute, that it made an object made of electrons known as a Majorana particle [which should make fewer errors and be easier to scale up]...

"We 100 percent stand behind our results. We stand by our roadmap," Microsoft's quantum lead, Chetan Nayak, responded in an interview with The Verge. In an email statement, he added that Microsoft's "papers do show that we are creating and controlling Majorana [particles]... Microsoft's supporting evidence is unconvincing [according to [Henry Legg, a physicist from the University of St. Andrews and a longtime Microsoft critic]Rnqyq. What it claimed as evidence of a Majorana particle, he says, could actually be due to quantum dots forming in its device. Quantum dots are electron-containing objects that are not useful for Microsoft's quantum computer. It also bases its claim on data from a single device, says Legg. He wants to see Microsoft replicate the results in multiple chips. "If you repeatedly try and find Jesus in your toast, eventually you'll find Jesus in your toast," he says. "But that one piece of toast doesn't mean you had some kind of epiphany."

"While we appreciate the religious fervor, our data maintains the strength and consistency of our roadmap, as we have for the past several years across previous milestones. We look forward to delivering the world's first quantum machine and sharing the energy of our achievements with the world," wrote Nayak in response.

Past spurious work from Microsoft-affiliated researchers adds to the doubt. In 2021, the journal Nature retracted an article from Microsoft-affiliated researchers in which they'd claimed strong experimental evidence that they'd created a Majorana particle.
"Even hopeful experts have varying opinions about when a quantum computer will demonstrate something useful," the article acknowledges.

But quantum computing lecturer Eleanor Crane of King's College London predicts researchers will have demonstrated a useful scientific simulation on a quantum computer by 2028.

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.

What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet More | Reply

What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet

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  • Absolutely Nothing (Score:3)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Saturday July 04, 2026 @10:42AM (#66222198)
    Quantum computing
    What is it good for?
    Absolutely nothing!!!
    Say it again...
    • No, it's absolutely brilliant for attracting funding and press coverage. Every few months you get to re-announce quantum supremacy or the quantocalypse and people will practically shovel money and media attention at you. In all of modern technological history I don't think anything that doesn't (provably) do anything has had so many billions of dollars and thousands(?) of person-years of effort invested in it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Well, we know what it's good for theoretically, but that's it.

      We don't know if a quantum computer that's useful and practical can be made. We don't know if a quantum computer is even able to accelerate computations over existing technologies.

      So far, the only working machines haven't proven either is true - either working on problems so small classical computers easily handle it or can do it just as fast.

      And unfortunately that's where we stand - in theory a quantum computer can accelerate all sorts of comput

  • 2028 is probably too early, but not by that much. People often overestimate short-term tech improvement and underestimate medium to long-term improvement. In this case, there's a lot of evidence for steady but improving metrics. TFS and TFA mention some of them but it is also worth looking at the general trend lines. In general, coherence times are increasing at a rate of roughly ten times as long every three years. See https://physics.aps.org/articles/v4/103 [aps.org]. The rate varies for the specific type of qubit

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      People often overestimate short-term tech improvement and underestimate medium to long-term improvement.

      Most investors don't want a long-term payoff, they have other options that are more likely to pay off in the shorter term. I doubt most quantum investors would accept a 40-year return if they knew that was the future.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sometimes it just needs a spark. It was six years from Attention to the first disappointing ChatGPT, but only 3 years from first ChatGPT to Mythos. The question is, if we also find industrial scale application for quantum computers or if they keep being a research tool.

    • 2028 isn't the prediction of something useful, it's a prediction of the next "simulation" that is not useful for anything.

      What's it good for? "Simulating" itself?

      When they say "simulation" what they mean is, when you turn it on and then off you have random data in the device that is as random as the prediction. It doesn't imply a device that can do something. If the device had a purpose, and you actually built it, you wouldn't call it a simulation.

      If it can't do some sort of arbitrary math according to a va

    • 2028 is probably too early, but not by that much.

      Q-Day (when the first publicly acknowledged practical quantum computer will be announced) has been estimated by a few organizations as happening somewhere between 2029 and 2033.

  • Sure, but isn't the "useful" thing they're going to do is destroy security worldwide by breaking asynchronous public-private keypair encryption?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That one can probably be handled (temporarily) just by using a longer key. Which can give you time to do the switch.

      The problem is that there's a lot of stuff already recorded that can't be protected that way.

      That said, what quantum computers should really be good at is material design, quantum modelling, etc. But they need to be quite a bit stronger. (OTOH, DWave sells a specialized quantum computer that's reported to do a decent job in it's particular niche. It's just not a general computer. IIUC, it

      • The people in charge of crypto are captive to the governments and would never increase key size more than just a smidge to make it appear safe. They will quote needing to support low power devices as their reason, when in reality it keeps things just weak enough for their super computers then we see later some other flaw reducing security effectiveness to essentially zero.

        Happens every time. We canâ(TM)t have a strong crypto meant for people with real computers. Machines with a 5080TI card capable of d

    • (Sorry, meant "asymmetric".)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      No. There are quantum resistant public key encryption schemes. There are also still serious questions whether breaking non-rsistant public key encryption is even practical.

      The big application for good quantum computers is probably materials science, but that's not as sexy as reading each other's mail.

  • What if quantum computing never happens? What if BitCoin is actually worthless? What if AI eventually leads us to agents of average human intelligence? What happened to unified field theory? So much money chasing nebulous shit. All this complicated stuff that only a few actually understand, though many will gladly explain to you. As I grow old, I tire of this stuff.

    • Re:Another scam? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Saturday July 04, 2026 @12:27PM (#66222298) Homepage

      ...What if AI eventually leads us to agents of average human intelligence? ...

      Then all the average humans are out of work. And there probably isn't enough need for above-average intelligence humans to keep all that many working.

      The economy, as we currently run it, ceases to function when unemployment exceeds 50%.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Then all the average humans are out of work.

        Not necessarily. Questions of motivation, mental issues, malicious behavior, learning ability, etc. may kill that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      As I grow old, I tire of this stuff.

      Same. This basically crap never works out and there are always a ton of not very smart people cheering for it.

      What if AI eventually leads us to agents of average human intelligence?

      The "not really AGI, but can navigate the world somewhat incompetently" kind? That one would be a huge, huge success actually, for quite a few areas, for example robotics. Friend of mine, a professor of robotics, told me that the "navigation capabilities of an ant would be a massive, massive improvement". It is unclear whether AI will ever amount to this much though. (No, Physicalism is not predicti

      • I think it's not all that bad. This QC stuff employs a lot of engineers, and on the way lots of stuff gets invented, think cooling technology or noise reduction strategies. Then a hundred years from now someone reads something strange in an old paper and invents the something that changes the world as we know it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I have no problem with some (!) QC research being done. I have a massive problem with large amounts of money being spent on it and the proponents lying, lying and lying some more.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )
      Gutnam's link is primarily about using quantum computers to break cryptography. Gutnam is not making any claim about other uses, such as in material science. And even in that context, there's a lot of issues with this, such as using Shor factorization records and extrapolating those out, when we know we're not yet in the domain where that should happen. (He's right that the current Shor factorizations aren't real implementations of Shor's algorithm but that's one slide of many.) Many of the slides in the mi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Many of the slides in the middle are simply attacks on motivation and claiming that using the word "quantum" makes people stupid.

        You got the causality wrong. Basically means you did miss what Gutman was actually saying. Nice. Conforms what he says though.

        • You got the causality wrong. Basically means you did miss what Gutman was actually saying. Nice. Conforms what he says though.

          From slide 21 he has a quote that "The word “quantum” sucks people's brains out, and otherwise sensible people suffer from impaired reasoning," and there are other similar lines. So I'm not sure why you think I got his claimed causality wrong. That you personally think that only stupid people take quantum computers seriously is a separate issue, which is independent from what Gutnam says. (That you are wrong is incidental.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. A lot of people cannot accept reality when it collides with their hallucinations though. Hence the low-quality attacks on Gutman's statements.

  • Just this week, I've seen a couple of news stories [sedaily.com] that said Samsung was using quantum computers to optimize it's lithography. Computational lithography - applying corrections to the mask for diffraction, resist non-linearity, and other optical effects - is critical for making small features and has been around forever. The article claims they are employing QCs for some of this. Not sure I believe a word of these reports, but I found them interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You got conned. They are not "using" anything. They want a bit of the PR aspect and hence are "looking into" doing that, which probably means absolutely nothing.

  • The "yet" is massively overstating it (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday July 04, 2026 @03:13PM (#66222420)

    No idea why people keep maintaining that delusion that they will eventually get there. All evidence is pointing in the other direction. But I guess people are just not living in reality.

    The non-physics-experiment part is essentially a "constant delivery scam". I mean, they do have a faked ("compiled" Shor's algorithm) factorization of 12 and 21 After something like 40 years of research. There is really no rational reason to expect anything at this time or in the foreseeable future. The physics experiment aspect is interesting, so I would like to keep that funded, on academic level. The idea that it will produce a QC has to die though. All that idea is doing is exposing the delulus. And there are a lot of those.

    • Instead of labeling people you disagree with "delulus" it would help to examine the serious evidence. Let's note that labeling this as a delusion means one is saying that people like Scott Aaronson, one of the most prolific and major quantum computing experts in the last few decades, who spent years being an active skeptic of a lot of claims about quantum computing, and still spends time explaining to people that the things they think quantum computers can do are often things they won't (like efficiently so

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The "serious evidence" is very, very clear and does not need any more examination. Those that claim that this stuff will deliver an useful QC anytime soon are delusional or lying. Period.

        • This is exactly the sort of response that isn't helpful. You haven't provided any evidence. You haven't grappled with anything I said. You've just repeated yourself. I don't know if QCs are going to become practical soon or not, but I suspect they will be in the next decade. But I'm very aware that people who have thought about it much more than I have disagree on the timeline here. Gil Kalai, for example, thinks humans will *never* have quantum computers based on fundamental physical issues. But I'm able t

          • Perhaps you should both place bets on polywhatsit

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              The problem with betting on stupidity is you cannot predict when it will become obvious enough. The QC bullshit has been around for 40 years or so now. I talked to somebody doing the PhD in this area 35 years ago. It was obvious back then that it will very likely not lead to any computing device. Still, the hype is low-key enough to not collapse by itself and it lives on.

              The other problem with these betting sites is that they are deeply dishonest and there basically is no legal recurse.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            This is exactly the sort of response that isn't helpful. You haven't provided any evidence.

            Stop bein an asshole. Evidence has been provided time and again. You just cannot accept it and that is a YOU problem.

            • Stop bein an asshole. Evidence has been provided time and again. You just cannot accept it and that is a YOU problem.

              What evidence? The only evidence you've provided was a vague wave about Shor's algorithm, which we're in agreement with. You haven't attempted to give anything else remotely resembling evidence, like a link, a citation, a source, anything here. And then after all the insults here and in the other thread where you and I discussed these issues you think the problem is me being an asshole? How hard is it rather than insult people to just give evidence that I and everyone else in this thread can actually look a

    • Also a separate reply to note a specific detail: > 12 and 21 You mean 15 and 21. There's no way Shor's algorithm would factor 12. It only factors odd numbers.

  • Even if quantum computers can scale and maintain coherence long enough to finish a calculation, their only real use is running Shor's algorithm to break public-key encryption. And there's only one customer for that - the government. So it'll be export-controlled.

    Grover's algorithm is nice, but it only gives a quadratic speedup. If you use travelling salesman as an example, for small problems conventional computers are faster (higher clock speed, massive parallelism). And for large problems, quantum computer

    • Are you suggesting that Shor's and Grover's are the only possible quantum algorithms? I'm not holding my breath for commercial QC either, but I don't like being overly pessimistic or conservative either. Quantum computers now are a bit like the early electronic computers of the 1940s — proofs of a concept but not exactly commercial success stories. Sure, with those computers people could do the same old calculations much faster, but the really interesting and useful applications involved a bit more v

  • I remain to be convinced that QCs will be able to do anything of practical use that digital computers cannot do far more simply, cheaply and at least as efficiently, any time soon, or even ever. What the QC computing community has produced in the last twenty years is 5% progress and 95% hype.
  • The advances in technology to provide low temperature low noise environments and devices need for quantum computing has been useful. Leading, for example, to a break-through in energy resolution of high-precision subatomic particle measurements (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08479-6).

  • First, apologies to Motown, Edwin Starr, Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. But this is obligatory... :)

    Q-C (What Is It Good For?)

    Q-C! (Huh, yeah!)
    What is it good for?
    Well, it ain't good for nothing!
    (Uh-huh!)
    Q-C! (Huh, yeah!)
    What is it good for?
    Just don't hype the scaling!
    Listen to me...

    Q-C... it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker.
    Q-C... friend only to the dilution refrigerator!
    Oh, you wanted perfect gates, but Physics gave you error rates,
    An RF knife fight with a pipe organ, sealing your fate!
    I sa

  • Quantum is nothing but a marketing buzzword to generate interest / investment.

    Similar to:

    AI
    Bitcoin
    Blockchain
    Cloud
    IOT
    etc

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