GOOGLE CLAIMS 

to

HAVE REACHED QUANTUM 

SUPREMACY

By

Søren Nielsen

2019

Researchers say their quantum computer has calculated an impossible problem for ordinary machines.

Google claims to have built the first quantum computer that can carry out calculations beyond the ability of today’s most powerful supercomputers, a landmark moment that has been hotly anticipated by researchers.

A paper by Google’s researchers seen by the FT, that was briefly posted earlier this week on a NASA website before being removed, claimed that their processor was able to perform a calculation in 3 minutes and 20 seconds that would take today’s most advanced classical computer, known as Summit, approximately 10,000 years.

The researchers said this meant the "quantum supremacy", when quantum computers carry out calculations that had previously been impossible, had been achieved.

"This dramatic speed-up relative to all known classical algorithms provides an experimental realisation of quantum supremacy on a computational task and heralds the advent of a much-anticipated computing paradigm," the authors wrote.


"To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor."

The system can only perform a single, highly technical calculation, according to the researchers, and the use of quantum machines to solve practical problems is still years away.


But the Google researchers called it "a milestone towards full-scale quantum computing". They also predicted that the power of quantum machines would expand at a "double exponential rate", compared to the exponential rate of Moore’s Law, which has driven advances in silicon chips in the first era of computing.

While prototypes of so-called quantum computers do exist, developed by companies ranging from IBM to start-ups such as Rigetti Computing, they can only perform the same tasks classical computers can, albeit quicker.

Quantum computers, if they can be built at scale, will harness properties that extend beyond the limits of classical physics to offer exponential gains in computing power.


A November 2018 report by the Boston Consulting Group said they could "change the game in such fields as cryptography and chemistry (and thus material science, agriculture and pharmaceuticals) not to mention artificial intelligence and machine learning . . . logistics, manufacturing, finance and energy".

Unlike the basic binary elements of classical computers, or bits, which represent either zeros or ones, quantum bits, or qubits, can represent both at the same time. By stringing together qubits, the number of states they could represent rises exponentially, making it possible to compute millions of possibilities instantly.

Some researchers have warned against overhyping the quantum supremacy, arguing that it does not suggest that quantum machines will quickly overtake traditional computers and bring a revolution in computing.

Led by John Martinis, an experimental physicist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Google first predicted it would reach quantum supremacy by the end of 2017. But the system it built, linking together 72 qubits proved too difficult to control.

It eventually revamped the system to create a 53-qubit design it codenamed Sycamore. The system was given the task of proving that a random-number generator was truly random. Though that job has little practical application, the Google researchers said that "other initial uses for this computational capability" included machine learning, materials science and chemistry.

"It’s a significant milestone, and the first time that somebody has shown that quantum computers could outperform classical computers at all," said Steve Brierley, founder of quantum software start-up Riverlane, who has worked in the field for 20 years and is an adviser on quantum technologies to the UK government. "It’s an amazing achievement."


Google declined to comment.

Foreseeing the Future Quantum-Artificial Intelligence World and Geopolitics - The Red (Team) Analysis Society.



Indeed, the NASA/Google claim "that our processor takes about 200 seconds to sample one instance of the quantum circuit 1 million times, a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task." 

This would mean indeed quantum supremacy, i.e. out-powering even the most powerful classical computer with a quantum computer for a computing task (for more explanations, see The Coming Quantum Computing Disruption, Artificial Intelligence and Geopolitics.

The paper describing this achievement was, however, then removed from the NASA website, the initial publisher. We can find, of course, cached versions of the paper, for example here (Bing cache) and here (pdf on a google drive). Furthermore, Bing specified it cached the page in ... 2006, possibly deepening the mystery. As a result, the web is abuzz with discussions regarding the validity of the claim (e.g. Hacker News).

One way or another, this reminds us that a world with quantum computers is about to be born. All actors need to take this new future into account, in all its dimensions. This is even truer for those concerned with international security at large.

This new series focuses on understanding the coming quantum-AI world. How will this future world look like? What will be the impacts on geopolitics and international security? When will these changes take place?

Previously, we highlighted how crucial it is to foresee the future quantum-AI world. First, imagining this world of tomorrow drives forward investments in quantum, thus the position in the race for quantum technologies. 

Second, and relatedly, displaying the right vision of the world of tomorrow will allow for readiness. In turn, that readiness will impact states' relative power in the international system.

Thus, those countries that will lag behind may well pay a very high price in terms of independence, economic development and wealth, security and capability to protect themselves and their citizens from foreign aggression, etc. 

Companies that do not foresee the forthcoming quantum-AI world and do not embrace it adequately could similarly have to face a very high cost, become obsolete, fail and disappear.


Foreseeing the future quantum-AI world is thus a geopolitical and security imperative. Yet foreseeing the future quantum-AI world is also particularly difficult. We explain why in the first part of this article. 

We then present a framework to move forward with foresight in the case of the future quantum-AI, security and geopolitics. In the second part, we highlight another danger, the inability to think and imagine the world beyond its current structure. 

We suggest ways to avoid this "failure of imagination". Finally, we present the building blocks upon which the future quantum-AI world is likely to be built. These blocks will be the starting point that will allow us to sketch the future quantum-AI world throughout the series.

A layer-cake of changes
The difficulty to imagine a Quantum-AI powered world results from the need to understand and foresee different layers of changes.

We need to foresee not one evolution, or a couple of dynamics and processes, but a myriad of them, as well as their interactions. 

Furthermore, those feedbacks will take place in and between different types of fields, and propagate differently. Indeed, quantum technologies and notably quantum computing and simulations, mixed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), or rather deep learning, will, first and foremost, be used by other sciences. 

As a result new discoveries and innovations will emerge in various areas. Furthermore, a resulting change in one science can be the starting point for a whole series of innovations in another scientific field. In turn, each of these evolutions will impact the world outside science in many ways. Meanwhile these consequences will feed into each other.

In other words, we must foresee quantum-AI-based changes in many different sciences, then the changes brought about by these innovations across areas and with different sequences of development.


Furthermore, as far as international security, warfare, geopolitics and governance are concerned, we cannot stop there. We also need to envision how these changes will impact all security-related areas, as well as governance and international relations.

We thus need to use a foresight approach that could look like a "layer-cake" model - funnily enough a metaphor already used in international relations (George Modelski, Principles of World Politics, 1972; Paul James.

Imagining a new structure for the future world.
In the approach to the quantum future where we "merely" extend the present to integrate quantum technologies, the structure of the world does not change. 

For example, manufacturing planes could be done more quickly, at a lower cost, and the planes produced could be of better quality, maybe flying more quickly, maybe flying autonomously. 

But, fundamentally, planes will still be planes and not much will have changed. For a plane manufacturer, not developing quantum capabilities would most likely still be catastrophic compared to competition. Nonetheless, the likely changes on the world may not be fundamentally disruptive.

We tend to be locked into the world we know and can only push forward and imagine existing trends and their known and main drivers.

What the former past examples show is that we must think beyond our current world. 

We must be able to think today's and tomorrow's version of crossing vast expanses of water, without seeing the land, of new representations of the world on new devices that will fundamentally alter polities and the international system. 

We need to be able to imagine future events similar to steamboats and consequent gunboat diplomacy, furthermore ran by "barbarians", that will fundamentally disrupt our world.

In other words, we must make sure that we do not fall prey to a "failure of imagination". Indeed, that error was identified as one of the major causes for 9/11 warning failure ( The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 339-348).

On the contrary, we must favour imagination. We need to succeed in thinking out of or beyond the structure of our known world.

To be able to do so, we shall first identify the building blocks upon which the quantum revolution is being currently built. We shall then investigate each block and look at the classical usage that is planned. 

We shall, however, not stop at first order effect, but also try envisioning second and third order impacts, including in terms of security, politics and geopolitics.


As we move through our building blocks we shall progress towards increasing levels of complexity. 

We shall try to imagine how some of these blocks are or could be combined. Finally, to try moving beyond the current structure of our world, we shall ask "what if" questions. We shall there suspend disbelief and favour imagination. These questions could lay the ground for future multi-disciplinary foresight work.

Building blocks for the future quantum-AI world.
The corporate world and notably start-ups have started working upon the way they could create and sell application for quantum computing. In the meanwhile, they have adopted categorisation or classifications.

For example, D-Wave (a company focusing on a type of quantum computing called quantum annealing - whilst most other develop gate-based quantum computers), identifies four major areas for its applications: optimization, machine learning, materials science and Monte Carlo simulations.

The start up Zapata Computing, specialised in creating quantum algorithms and developing software across quantum computing platforms, categorises its applications according to three areas: quantum chemistry, optimization and quantum machine learning, as shown on the table below:

Zapata Computing categories of quantum algorithms applications and examples:

Another startup QCware, identifies five types of "use cases": chemistry simulations, optimization, machine learning, differential equations and Monte Carlo Methods.


Consulting companies, such as the Boston Consulting Group, focus on applications, but already segment them according to the sectors they use for their consulting business (Philipp Gerbert and Frank Rueß, " The Next Decade in Quantum Computing-and How to Play ", BCG, 15 November 2018). We thus have as users' categories: 

High Tech, Industrial Goods, Chemistry and Pharma, Finance and Energy. This early categorisation, however, makes it also difficult to imagine other usages in other areas, while it does hardly consider feedbacks across industries and larger impacts on society, which will then, in turn, have consequences for all actors, including businesses.

Building blocks for the future quantum-AI world.
If we synthesise these approaches, as well as others, finding out future - and current - application and use for quantum computing, as well as more generally quantum science, tends to follow two paths, that may then be combined.

First, and logically because we deal with new computing facilities, actors use types of algorithms as starting points and categories to envision future quantum computing applications. 

We thus have mainly quantum optimization algorithms and quantum machine learning. We find also simulations and notably Monte Carlo simulations/methods, as well as differential equations.

Because of Shor's algorithm, quantum computing and cryptography should belong here. However, we shall also consider this section, as well as the related quantum communication field, notably because of their impacts on intelligence and counter-intelligence, as a complete layer, impacting all others.


Second, various scientific disciplines try to develop a quantum approach to their field and investigate if quantum mechanics can improve their scientific understanding. In that case, they benefit from the new quantum computing approaches, including the development of quantum algorithms.