I regardless believe that outside (and arguably within) quantum cryptanalysis the applications will be fairly limited.
I might be confused, but did we agree that the most useful application of quantum computing would be on chemistry and material science? I thought so, but the above sentence seems to say otherwise...
I believe that chemistry and material science are two applications where quantum computing might be a useful tool, since simulating very simple physical systems is something where a quantum computer excels at but arguably significantly slower to do in a classical computer.
On the other hand, people more versed on material science and chemistry I talked to seemed to believe that (1) classical approximations will be good enough to approach problems in these areas and (2) in silico design is not a huge bottleneck anyway.
So I am open to a quantum computing revolution in chemistry and material science, but moderately skeptical.
Summarizing my current beliefs about how important quantum computing will be for future applications:
Cryptoanalysis ⇒ very important for solving a handful of problems relevant for modern security, with no plausible alternative
Chemistry and material science ⇒ Plausibly useful, not revolutionary.
Yeah one strong reason to believe in your own judgement over that of prediction markets/prediction engine medians is if you think you have additional important additional information that the community was not able to update on. In this case, the question was closed in mid-2018 and the paper came out in 2019.
Note that we believe that quantum supremacy has already been achieved.
As in, the quantum computer Sycamore from Google is capable of solving a (toy) problem that we currently believe unfeasible in a classical computer.
Of course, there is a more interesting question of when will we be able to solve practical problems using quantum computing. Experts believe that the median for a practical attack on modern crypto is ~2035.
I regardless believe that outside (and arguably within) quantum cryptanalysis the applications will be fairly limited.
The paper in my post goes in more detail about this.
I might be confused, but did we agree that the most useful application of quantum computing would be on chemistry and material science? I thought so, but the above sentence seems to say otherwise...
I think we broadly agree.
I believe that chemistry and material science are two applications where quantum computing might be a useful tool, since simulating very simple physical systems is something where a quantum computer excels at but arguably significantly slower to do in a classical computer.
On the other hand, people more versed on material science and chemistry I talked to seemed to believe that (1) classical approximations will be good enough to approach problems in these areas and (2) in silico design is not a huge bottleneck anyway.
So I am open to a quantum computing revolution in chemistry and material science, but moderately skeptical.
Summarizing my current beliefs about how important quantum computing will be for future applications:
Cryptoanalysis ⇒ very important for solving a handful of problems relevant for modern security, with no plausible alternative
Chemistry and material science ⇒ Plausibly useful, not revolutionary.
AI and optimization ⇒ unlikely to be useful, huge constraints to overcome
Biology and medicine ⇒ not useful, systems too complex to model
Yeah one strong reason to believe in your own judgement over that of prediction markets/prediction engine medians is if you think you have additional important additional information that the community was not able to update on. In this case, the question was closed in mid-2018 and the paper came out in 2019.
Thanks Linch; I actually missed that the prediction had closed!
Yeah the Metaculus UI is not the most intuitive, I should flag this at some point.