Katia Riddle

So many scientists genuinely believe quantum computing could help with things like simulating molecules or developing new materials, because those problems are just incredibly complex, too complex for classical computers.

But another guy I talked to, Bill Pfefferman, he's focused his life's work on quantum physics, and he's pretty skeptical about its actual usefulness.

Bill is a computer scientist at the University of Chicago.

He says the field is still just very early.

We don't have quantum computers that can do useful real-world tasks yet.

Right.

Before we can use quantum computing to, for example, cure cancer, we have to make sure that quantum computers we have are accurate.

That is a really, really hard task.

We talked about this idea of quantum supremacy.

That's the idea that a quantum computer solves a problem faster than any classical computer could in a reasonable amount of time.

Yes, Google is claiming to with their computer chip.

I talked to Karina Chow.

She's the COO at Google Quantum AI, and they make this claim.

Well, it depends on who you talk to.

It would be, but some people disputed this claim.

IBM came out shortly afterward and showed that they had a classical computer solve it in a couple of days.

Google stands by their claim.

They argue it still did show quantum supremacy at the time.

So it's debatable how significant these milestones are or not.

when they'll yield something useful.