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Google Has Enlisted NASA To Help it Prove Quantum Supremacy Within Months (technologyreview.com)
Google wants NASA to help it prove quantum supremacy within a matter of months, MIT Technology Review reported Monday, citing the Space Act Agreement. From the report: Quantum supremacy is the idea, so far undemonstrated, that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer will be able to complete certain mathematical calculations that classical supercomputers cannot. Proving it would be a big deal because it could kick-start a market for devices that might one day crack previously unbreakable codes, boost AI, improve weather forecasts, or model molecular interactions and financial systems in exquisite detail. The agreement, signed in July, calls on NASA to "analyze results from quantum circuits run on Google quantum processors, and ... provide comparisons with classical simulation to both support Google in validating its hardware and establish a baseline for quantum supremacy." Google confirmed to MIT Technology Review that the agreement covered its latest 72-qubit quantum chip, called Bristlecone. Where classical computers store information in binary bits that definitely represent either 1 or 0, quantum computers use qubits that exist in an undefined state between 1 and 0. For some problems, using qubits should quickly provide solutions that could take classical computers much longer to compute.
If you told me this 10 years ago, I'd only want Google to be the ones to do this.
Now, one of the companies I trust the least on the planet is doing it, not a good sign.
That's not the real problem. The real problem is all the companies and governments that have slurped up every bit to ever cross the Internet. The data is there, forever, and can be broken whenever it's easy. Think of all the private secret corporate, government, and personal information that is sitting waiting to be cracked open. Bank accounts, etc... Yikes.