Amid Google’s claim that its newly launched Willow, the state-of-the-art quantum computing chipset, can reduce errors exponentially when scaling with more qubits, critics have questioned the tech giant’s bold claims.
Google even said that their solution would take a “septillion years” on traditional machines. It sparked discussions among the scientific community about the possibility of parallel universes or multiverses.
The 105-cubit quantum chipset Willow is claimed to have practical applications in areas like drug discovery, battery designs, and fusion energy.
Steve Jurvetson, the San Francisco-based venture capitalist, said in a post on X that Google’s claim of quantum supremacy was based on a flawed benchmark and that it has no real-world applications.
“Google’s repeated quantum supremacy claims are based on RCS, a contrived benchmark that they admit “has no known real-world applications,” Jurveson posted. “It’s essentially a quantum computer simulating itself.”
Besides, German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder took to X and said the tech giant’s claims were not true, suggesting that the achievement might not be as impactful as it was projected.
“The particular calculation in question is to produce a random distribution. The result of this calculation has no practical use,” Hossenfelder said. She further pointed out that Google had specifically chosen a problem that had been formally proven to be challenging for conventional computers due to its reliance on heavy entanglement.
Amidst all the criticism, Willow has its share of positive moments. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, indicated a potential collaboration for quantum clusters in space with Starship soon after the chipset launch on Monday.
This Has Happened Before
What Google is showcasing is essentially the same as the one performed back in 2019 on their roughly 54-qubit chip. The company had insisted that machines performed the target computation in 200 seconds. From measurements and experiments, they determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output.
The current claim has scaled up from 54 to 105-qubit chip, and the statement, “It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years.”
The earlier claim of “quantum supremacy” was met with scepticism from IBM shortly after its announcement, with the company saying, “We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.”
Three years later, in 2022, Google’s claim was reportedly replicated by scientists in China in a few hours with ordinary processors.
Hossenfelder also notes a pattern in the quantum computing field: grand claims about ‘quantum utility,’ ‘quantum advantage,’ or ‘quantum supremacy’ often lose their lustre when alternative methods are discovered to achieve similar results using conventional computing, leaving the promises of transformative breakthroughs unrealised.
America, followed closely by China and India
Such developments in quantum computing are not just the hold of the US but also being powered by China. As reported by AIM, China recently launched its advanced 504-qubit superconducting quantum computer, ‘Tianyan-504’. This computer crosses the 500-qubit threshold and competes directly with international platforms like IBM.
Cohesively, in a recent interview, Kai-Fu Lee, a Taiwanese computer scientist, entrepreneur, and author of ‘AI Superpower,’ said that China will catch up with the US in AI capabilities.
However, in terms of AI startups, many are deciding not to sell chips to China. But China has not given up and has managed to demonstrate a stable quantum key distribution (QKD)-based communication network spanning over 4,600 km—the largest and most advanced QKD network globally to date.
Following that, IBM has made major progress in becoming a leader in quantum computing.
And India is not behind. Dr Ajai Chowdhry, the co-founder of HCL and chairman of the mission governing board for India’s National Quantum Mission, said on his LinkedIn, “India must urgently prepare itself for the quantum revolution to safeguard its security and national interests.”
India’s largest quantum computer, with 6 to 7 superconducting qubits, is being developed at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in collaboration with DRDO and TCS. The country also aims to develop 100-qubit computers within the next five years.
LTIMindtree also recently announced a strategic collaboration with IBM to advance the quantum innovation ecosystem. The collaboration extended to joint projects with IIT Madras, supporting India’s National Quantum Mission, and aimed at creating a strong industry-academia ecosystem.
AI in the Quantum Race
In another conversation with AIM, Dr Chowdhry, popularly known as the ‘Father of Indian Hardware’, highlighted the magic AI can bring to quantum computing. He referred to the AI and quantum blend as a “lethal” one.
Multiple tech giants like Google and Microsoft are actively developing this combination to drive the next wave of the AI revolution.
While acknowledging the scientific impressiveness of Google’s latest announcement, multiple discussions point out that its practical implications are currently limited. According to estimates, a million qubits are necessary to achieve applications with everyday relevance, and we remain far from that benchmark.
