Software, not hardware, will drive quantum and neuromorphic computing
nextplatform.com
nextplatform.com
For the time being, without a doubt, hardware is the gating factor to the success of quantum computers. Theorists and engineers have built a ton of algorithms and software already, waiting to have hardware that performs even just barely sufficiently to handle them.
Materials science is so woefully behind that we’re still charging up electrolytic batteries like it’s 1859.
The only important problem set left is beaking cryptosystems which gives governments even greater power over us.
I worked very hard for many years and payed taxes legally and bought Bitcoin 100% legally through regulated exchanges so it's quite boring to me that money laundering comes up all the time. Most of the money that governments steal are made by tax abiding hard working citizens, not dictatorships that destroyed all their wealth.
That said there might be some problems that might only be solvable using a full quantum simulation, though personally I think that class of problems will be rather small.
It currently performs ok on protein prediction but cannot do new proteins, which would theoretically be possible with quantum computers. And its not just a matter of giving alphafold more resources they are entirely different problems
I don't see quantum computers anywhere near as close to solving a real problem with drug research as AlphaFold (although I don't argue with the theoritical possibility in the future, but not in the next 5-10 years, where AlphaFold can shine).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32262856
There are some interesting criticisms from the language, to the results, to the limitations of AlphaFold that I think seem to represent the prevailing opinion from biologists about the current scope of what ML can achieve on their field.
There is also push back to the complaints and some very optimistic people about Deep learning models on the field so perhaps you are right.
So was also seti@home.
Quantum computing is not going to be very useful until normal programmers can work with it. If you need a Ph. D. in theoretical physics to even understand what is happening, there are not going to be a lot of people that qualify. I don't see this happening very soon.
Right now quantum computing has three problems:
- few people even understand what it does and fewer are capable of explaining that in a sane way. Articles on this topics are using a lot of quantum computing cliches and bad analogies (cats in boxes, etc.) to make it seem like it's some kind of dark magic that will solve any problem trivially. It does not help that professional snake oil sellers like IBM are all over it either.
- Current hardware is not very practical, useful, or cheap. Not enough qubits to do much useful things, lots of issues related to error detection and mitigation, not scalable.
- The only quantum computer software that exists is essentially proofs of concept and research prototypes. Basically it shows that if we had a working quantum computer, we might be able to make it do some useful things. But nobody has gotten there just yet.