The Quantum Computing Race for Muggles

TL;DR

This is an attempt to explain in plain English, from an insider, what’s going on with the Quantum Computing race that is giving a lot of mixed feelings to investors lately. Our own particular singularity will be reached when someone builds an error-corrected quantum computer, capable of doing universal computation (something apparently forgotten by media histeria). But until then, there are key milestones we must conquer.

AI enters the room

AI is the new kid in the block, everyone is paying attention to it, and for a good reason, so it's time for us, the quantum computing community, to refocus on what is really important. The new kid has an astronomical potential to change everything what we know dramatically, even in the short-to-mid term. This leaves no room for us to make empty promises anymore. We need to perform now or watch investors shift their focus to AI.

The price is succulent, the economic reward is beyond expectations but what is really motivating most of the people who has embraced in this odyssey, is the recognition of achieved one of the most challenging milestones humanity has ever met. Yes, we all want to be the guy who was on the team that has earned a place alongside the Gods of most impactful humanity achievements.

With such stakes, it’s no surprise that some contenders muddy the waters to grab attention. It’s a strategy like any other: publish a paper, let the marketing team do their job, and wait for the media to spin epic, click-bait stories no one will bother to fact-check. After all, who spends their Sunday investigating why error-corrected non-Clifford gates are so hard to implement? Muggles certainly don’t. It’s easier—and more profitable—to talk about machines that open portals to multiple universes. (Don’t get me wrong—I love science fiction too!)

It took immense effort to move beyond the “Quantum Supremacy” nonsense, and now we’ve kind of agreed that Quantum Advantage is the next big thing before the real next big thing.

What is Quantum Advantage

I won’t answer this without some dramatic context first. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from past “quantum supremacy” delusions, it’s that finding a problem worth solving is actually the hard part. If the chosen problem is so niche that only a few mathematicians with supernatural powers can understand it, then it’s not really Quantum Advantage. It’s progress, sure, and that’s welcome. But classical computers won’t be in any real danger.

Drawing attention to yourself is tempting, especially when you want to captivate investors and keep the research going. Quantum computing is so unintuitive and complex that progress announcements are easily misinterpreted—and some players exploit this. It’s unfair, but hey, who are we to spoil the party for the Muggles? Let them have their fun!

Now, back to the big question: What is Quantum Advantage?
Here’s a somewhat disappointing answer: The community hasn’t reached a consensus on its definition yet.

What we agreed upon so far:

1. The problem must be a real-life problem (™).
2. There’s currently no classical way to solve it efficiently (though eventually, someone might approximate it using classical methods—there are plenty of brilliant minds out there).

The Quantum Computing community must align on a clear definition to send a strong and unified message to the world: Be ready. This is coming.

But what is preventing us to have Quantum Advantage today?

Ok, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Noise.

Noise everywhere

Qubits are noisy, qubits are sensitive, qubits are ephemeral. This is their nature, at least from our macro-world perspective. We are building a machine that is providing Qubits a home where they feel clam, relaxed, open-minded so they are willing to converse and chat about love, music, Frodo Baggins. But there are forces outside of this home that are actively trying to disrupt this enjoyable moment; Cosmic rays, heat, vibrations, magnetic fields, photons, fake news, northern lights! (yes, really!), full moon!, Elon!, you name it. There are many distractions out there who turn our conversations into some sort of unspeakable gibberish where nothing makes sense anymore. This is what we call error accumulation. There’s no practical computation when all these errors stack up, and they do so very quickly!. Unmatched engineering challenge if you ask me.

This is a battle to death, either we keep this error under control or we die trying.

We will only win this battle once we know how to keep the noise and/or the outer-world distractions out of the qubits. Error corrected qubits is where we spend millions.

I have some good news for you. We’re starting to see green shoots of progress. Confidence in the field is higher than ever, and this is a much-needed boost. Quantum computing will happen, but we’re not there yet. We’re still far from declaring victory—but we’re visualizing it. (Okay, I’m biased—I’ve been working in this field for eight years! Let me be excited!)

Now we know that Quantum Advantage is only going to happen once we have error corrected qubits… isn’t it? hmmm… Not entirely. While error-corrected qubits are critical, there’s also room for creative approaches. We’re exploring noise mitigation as a workaround for specific problems. This doesn’t fully solve the noise problem, but it allows us to clean up noisy results through post-processing and extract meaningful data. This approach works for small, specific problems—real-life ones, nonetheless—but it doesn’t scale well. The ultimate goal remains a fault-tolerant quantum computer (FTQC).

Finally, let’s touch on why recent claims of Quantum Advantage fall short: Universal Computation. But that’s a discussion for another day.