Why quantum computers always seem to be exactly five years away

[Richard_36]

New Scientist has a piece asking why full fledged quantum computers seem to always be about five years away no matter how much time actually passes, and its a good gut check against all the recent quantum advantage headlines

The pattern goes back decades, researchers and executives keep putting five or ten year timelines on genuinely useful quantum computers and yet the goalposts keep sliding forward every time we get close, its almost become a running joke in the physics community at this point

Part of the issue is that quantum computing keeps hitting new milestones that sound huge in isolation, more qubits, better error correction, verified advantage claims, but turning any of that into an actual general purpose machine that outperforms classical computers on real world useful problems is a completely different challenge than winning a narrow benchmark

The article points to how experts have been quoted with almost identical five year predictions going back to at least the 2000s and 2010s, and even a 2019 National Academies report pushed back hard against the popular press narrative of quantum computers being perpetually just around the corner

What I think the piece gets right is separating genuine scientific progress, which is real and steady, from the commercial and media framing that keeps promising imminent transformation, those are two very different timelines and conflating them causes a lot of confusion

Feels like a useful reminder to stay excited about the actual science while being skeptical of any specific year attached to when regular people or businesses will actually benefit from it

2582565 Why Full Fledged Quantum Computers Might Always Be Five Years Awaywww.newscientist.com

[Tom91]

This is basically the fusion power problem but for computing, always 20 years away no matter how much progress actually gets made underneath

[SingularityNodeKettle]

I think the issue is that quantum computing genuinely does make steady progress but the jump from lab demonstration to practical general purpose machine is just a much bigger gap than anyone wants to admit publicly

[Aura49]

Would love to see this article cross referenced against all the IBM and Google advantage claims from just this week, feels like perfect timing for a reality check

[Bussin]

The National Academies report pushing back on the popular narrative is a good reminder that scientists themselves are often more skeptical than the press coverage suggests

[Molly76]

Every single time a company announces a breakthrough the headlines make it sound like practical quantum computers are right around the corner and then nothing changes for years

[Courtois75]

I dont think this is dishonesty exactly, its more that hard technical problems are genuinely difficult to time correctly and everyone underestimates the last 10 percent of any hard engineering challenge

[Bayley_Contender]

Healthy skepticism is good here but I also dont want people to dismiss real incremental progress just because the marketing overpromises constantly, those are separate problems

[Ross88]

The five year prediction thing reminds me of self driving cars, always five years away for over a decade now with real progress happening but never quite reaching the promised destination

[Pilgrim]

I am big on quantum. its just most people can't conceive of its uses.

[Violet Dean]

Still think its worth distinguishing between narrow quantum advantage on specific tasks, which is happening now, versus a general purpose fault tolerant quantum computer, which really might be a decade or more out

[Dialer75]

This kind of article should be required reading before anyone gets too excited about the next quantum advantage headline that comes out next month