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> They barely have any control over what their gates do.

I don't understand this, could you explain?

My understanding is that the gates are perfectly normal quantum gates, which they use to connect qubits in a programmable way. Due to the probabilistic nature of quantum computing, running this circuit generates samples from a random distribution.

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I attended a Google talk where they acknowledged difficulty in controlling their device. That was given as the motivation for running problems that consist of "random gates".

My understanding from reading Scott Aaronson's FAQ is that the "random" in "random gates" just means that they pick a random circuit to evaluate. But this circuit is known, just like a program can pick a random number and then print it out.

The fact that quantum computing behaves "randomly" by nature further complicates the discussion :)

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