Governments and tech companies continue to pour money into quantum technology in hopes of creating a supercomputer that can run at speeds we can't yet imagine to solve big problems.
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Imagine a computer that could solve incredibly complex problems at speeds we cannot yet imagine, and make breakthroughs in areas such as drug development or clean energy. Many believe this is the promise of quantum computing. In 2025, technology companies have invested in this area. The Trump administration has also named quantum computing as a priority. But when will this technology actually bring something useful to ordinary people? NPR's Katya Riddle talks about the difference between quantum hype and quantum reality.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, as well as the U.S. government, are betting big on quantum computing in 2025.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Google Quantum AI provides the first demonstration of a verifiable quantum advantage.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Joining forces on quantum computing.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Creating a completely new architecture for quantum computing.
RIDDLE: Bill Fefferman, a professor and computer scientist at the University of Chicago, is less enthusiastic.
BILL FEFFERMAN: While I think significant progress has been made in building large-scale quantum computers, we have not yet seen a quantum experiment that both solves a provably hard problem and is also independently useful to society.
RIDDLE: Fefferman got into this field because he found it so fascinating. He still does that. In the ten years he's been working on quantum computing, it has surpassed everything he could have imagined. But he says it's still unclear whether it will have any practical benefit in his lifetime.
FEFFERMAN: I would say the jury is still out.
RIDDLE: Even Google, while boasting of its achievements, simultaneously lives up to expectations. Here is a transcript of one of the marketing videos called “Quantum Computing: Deception vs. Reality.”
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: So we're still a long way off from creating a useful, large-scale, error-correcting quantum computer that will solve a lot of practical, real-world problems.
RIDDLE: So why does the frenzy over quantum computing continue, even if it doesn't produce results? To answer this question, let's look at one key phenomenon at the heart of quantum theory: superposition.
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DOMINIC WALLIMAN: I can rotate one way. I can turn in the other direction.
RIDDLE: Dominic Walliman is a scientist and educator whose job is to explain these things. Here's part of his Ted Talk entitled “Quantum Physics for 7-Year-Olds.” In this part of the lecture he stands on stage and explains superposition. This is when the state of the particle is not fixed. It exists in a combination of possible states. It's a cloud of possibilities. He turns the other way.
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WALLIMAN: But what would it look like if I were spinning in both directions at the same time?
RIDDLE: Walliman spins as if he is caught between two opposing forces.
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WALLIMAN: We can't do that (laughter). We can't imagine this. But that's what these subatomic particles do all the time.
RIDDLE: Ordinary computers can only think in binary – black or white, zero or one. Quantum computers use superposition to think in shades of gray, in terms of potentials and possibilities, and essentially simulate how molecules work in nature. The entire quantum computing project is designed to harness this power. Charina Chow is the Chief Operating Officer of Google Quantum AI. She says the promise of quantum computing is virtually limitless.
CHARINA CHOW: There are a lot of incurable diseases, right? – for which there is no cure, for which medications have terrible side effects or, you know, we just don't have a complete answer.
RIDDLE: For now, these use cases are just fantasies, but big fantasies.
CHOW: Either factories or agriculture or other places where small molecules are important, advanced solid-state materials that can be used in batteries or semiconductors, things like that.
RIDDLE: To be clear, early prototypes of quantum computers look nothing like your laptop. First, they are huge—about the size of a refrigerator—and they keep temperatures very low. Right now, scientists are working on the main goal of getting these computers to solve an algorithm that a normal computer would not be able to solve in a reasonable amount of time. This is what is called quantum supremacy. Zhou says Google already introduced this in 2019 with a computer chip they called Sycamore.
CHOW: Yes, on our best quantum chip it showed that solving this random circuit test problem would take a couple of minutes, but on the world's best supercomputer it would take 10,000 years.
RIDDLE: Taking a few minutes to solve a problem that would otherwise take 10,000 years is truly a huge achievement. Bill Fefferman, a quantum scientist, says this is one reason for his skepticism.
FEFFERMAN: The problem is we don't have evidence of those numbers.
RIDDLE: This is such a new field, he says, that it's difficult to predict anything with certainty. In fact, shortly after Google made this announcement, IBM said it could perform the same calculations on a classic computer in a couple of days. Today, Google stands by its findings, noting that IBM's claim was theoretical. Fefferman emphasizes that the achievements of Google and others should be viewed as progress, not failure, even if they are later refuted.
FEFFERMAN: It's not a failure. Actually, these claims are generally not clear that they are not true when they come out.
RIDDLE: The job of people like him and his colleagues, he says, is to pump the tires on these kinds of experiments and help build better quantum computers.
FEFFERMAN: Then everything gets better because the next experiment gets better.
RIDDLE: Fefferman says it could be five, a hundred or 20 years before we see a breakthrough in quantum computing. But he emphasizes how far the field has come since he began studying it after receiving his PhD. in 2014.
FEFFERMAN: We thought we were working on some kind of science fiction experiment. Like, we didn't even think that this would ever come close to coming true.
RIDDLE: Fefferman says the most realistic goal of quantum computing right now is progress for progress's sake. This is how science works, even if it seems like science fiction.
Katya Riddle, NPR News.
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