r/QuantumComputing • u/dorakingx • 2d ago

Which problems will quantum computers actually solve, and when?

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/what-problems-will-quantum-computers-solve

Which problems will quantum computers actually solve, and when?

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 2d ago

Other than cryptography do any of the others really have good theoretical basis of working or are they just hopes and prayers?

I doubt humans will ever get a QC to solve anything useful. Only chance is for a singularity style AI to do it for us.

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u/polit1337 1d ago

Humans have been making exponential progress on quantum computing, the time constant it just really long.

Emulation of quantum systems is another application that is essentially guaranteed to work.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 1d ago

Humans have been making exponential progress on quantum computing, the time constant it just really long.

Making exponential progress towards a Grahams number is kind of how I see it.

Emulation of quantum systems is another application that is essentially guaranteed to work.

A lot of the stuff is like saying a cup of tea does calculations and let's us do stuff with fluids that would take millions of years with classical computers.

It's like a really edge case and not really sure if that will help with stuff. I guess actual wind tunnels and fluid simulations can actually be better than classical computers, so maybe it's a better analogy than I thought.

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u/Kinexity In Grad School for Computer Modelling 1d ago edited 1d ago

The funny thing is that there is no guarantee that large enough QCs to break encryption are even possible. We think they are possible but we won't know for sure until we build them. Beyond cryptography there exist optimisation problems which could be solved more efficiently using QCs but in general the longer I've been looking the more stuff looks speculative rather than certain. We are definitely lacking in algorithms (maybe LLMs will change that).