Schrödinger’s cat you’ve met—the one that is both alive and dead at the same time. Now say hello to Schrödinger’s scientists, researchers who are in an eerie state of being simultaneously delighted and appalled.
Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment has come to life in a new form because quantum researchers are at the cusp of a long-sought accomplishment: creating a quantum computer that can do something no traditional computer can match. They’ve spent years battling naysayers who insisted that a quantum computer was an unachievable sci-fi fantasy, and now these researchers are finally beginning to indulge in some well-deserved self-congratulation.
But they are simultaneously cringing at a torrent of press accounts that wildly overstate the progress they’ve made. Exhibit A: Time magazine’s quantum-computing feature of 17 February 2014, with the editors declaring on the cover that “the Infinity Machine” is so revolutionary that it “promises to solve some of humanity’s most complex problems.” And since then, many press accounts have been equally hyperbolic.
Graeme Smith, a quantum-computing researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, explains the conundrum now facing the field. “It used to be that if you were working in this area, you were the optimist telling everyone how great it’s going to be. But then things shifted, and now researchers like me can’t believe the things we’re hearing about how quantum computers will very soon be able to solve every problem blazingly fast. There’s almost a race to the bottom in making claims about what a quantum computer can do.”
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