[mark_l_watson]

I was excited to read this article up to the last sentence, a quote from the program manager “We’re trying to get support within Google, and this experiment has been very good to get other engineers talking to us.” to me, this statement negates much of the positive spin of the article. That said, the title does say 'stepping stone.'

My primary professional interest is AI and quantum computing to pushing the field forward seems almost inevitable.

[nullnilvoid]

I did not bother to read the article. The title looks suspicious to me. For a scientific breakthrough, you don't plan it ahead. Instead, you work hard for a long time and all in a sudden you hit that milestone. It is unpredictable and certainly cannot be planned easily.

[21]

The LHC was planned 25 years before it was a reality. In fact, one of the first pictures put on the WWW when it was created at CERN was a schematic of the LHC:

https://home.cern/sites/home.web.cern.ch/files/image/update-...

[delecti]

The LHC wasn't a scientific milestone, it was an engineering one. Using the LHC has led to milestones.

[mr_overalls]

In many fields, for the past several decades, scientific progress has been inextricably bound with technical progress. New tools yield new experiments/discoveries.

[21]

But this article also talks about an engineering milestone, there is no scientific milestone in going from a 6 qubit computer or a 49 qubit one.

[wzeng]

Thinking about this demonstration as an experiment could be a little misleading. It's somewhere between an experiment and a benchmark. Nobody has any reason to expect new physics between 10 and 50 qubits, but actually building and controlling the system is complicated. Quantum computing is in an interesting place right now where engineering milestones and scientific milestones are happening together because the technology is so fundamental.

That doesn't happen that often and it's one of the most exciting things to be about being in the field. If that interest you, then you might want to come work at Rigetti Computing: "The Tiny Startup Racing Google to Build a Quantum Computing Chip" https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600711/the-tiny-startup-r... We're hiring.

[13of40]

I get the impression that quantum computing is already at a point where they understand the science, and the challenge now is how to implement it in a useful and viable way. If that's the case it's fine to say we can't manufacture it now but we'll be there in X months, give or take.

[1_2__3]

It's been in that state for many years at this point.

[RushAndAPush]

I think a lot of computer scientists have a hard time believing quantum computers are possible. Not saying I agree, but I've heard this viewpoint a number of times.

[Xcelerate]

Like who?

[venture_lol]

HN, slashdot, reddit, etc. etc :)