StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

John Preskill

Professor of Theoretical Physics, Caltech · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

academicscientist@preskill ↗LinkedIn ↗preskill.caltech.edu ↗Wikipedia ↗

John Preskill is a theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He pioneered work in quantum computing and error correction, and famously won a scientific bet against Stephen Hawking regarding the black hole information paradox.

35statements → 22claims → 13claims resolved → 92%fully supported → 3.49/5average certainty → 1.69/5average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

12 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 7 not checkable as stated how the 22 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 predictions · 11 assertions · 4 opinions · 9 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 22 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 13 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how John argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Preskill: 50-to-100 qubit quantum computers will arrive in a couple years
“We think in a couple of years we'll have devices with about 50 qubits to a hundred, and we'll be able to control them pretty well, and that's an interesting range, because even though it's only 50 to a hundred qubits, doesn't sound like that big a deal, but th…”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 19:48 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Preskill: Validated topological qubit may appear as soon as 2019
“And it's very ambitious, because at this point, it's not even clear they have a single qubit, but if that approach is successful, and we're, it's making progress, so I think we will see a validated Qubit of this type soon, maybe next year.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 28:45 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
0% certainty 2
100% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Everything John Preskill said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported
Preskill: Grover's algorithm only doubles tractable cities in traveling salesman problems
“And in practice, it's not that big a deal. What it means is that, you know, if you have the same processing speed, you can handle about you know, twice as many cities before the problem becomes too hard to solve as you could if you were using a classical proce…”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 8:44 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Current quantum computers are too small for proposed algorithms
“We have algorithms that have been proposed, but, which we can't really run currently, because our quantum computers aren't big enough, on the scale that's needed to solve problems really, people really care about.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 18:05 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Current quantum tech achieves gate error rates around a few parts per thousand
“More or less with the technology we have now, you can have a gate error rate of a few parts in a thousand, you know.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 22:51 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Superconducting qubit coherence times grew 10x every three years
“And for the superconducting circuits, those coherence times have increased about a factor of 10 every three years, going back 15 years or so.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 30:09 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Superconducting circuits execute gates faster than trapped-ion qubits
“They have the advantage of being faster than the time to take the cycle time, the time to do a gate is faster than with the trapped ions.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 33:08 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Quantum computers can break both RSA and elliptic curve cryptography
“RSA, which is one of the ones that's widely used, as typically practiced today, the, to break it, you'd have to do something like factor a number, which is Over 2000 bits long to 20 48. And that's, you know, that's too hard to do now. But that's what quantum c…”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 38:01 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Quantum information can travel tens of kilometers in fiber with low error
“But nowadays, you know, you can send quantum information through an optical fiber over tens of kilometers with you know, a low enough error rate, so it's useful for communication.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 43:23 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Insight
Preskill: Quantum repeaters require much smaller processors than computing hard problems
“And so it will require some quantum processing to get that quantum error correction in the quantum repeater to work. But it's a much more modest scale quantum processor than we would need to solve hard problems.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 45:13 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Insight
Preskill: Quantum entanglement does not enable faster-than-light communication
“What sometimes Gets said, or the impression people get, is that that means that when I do something to my qubit, it instantaneously affects your qubit, even if we're on different sides of the galaxy. But that's not what entanglement does. It just means they're…”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 59:19 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Supported
Preskill: Single photons cannot reach global distances in fiber without repeaters
“Because at least with, you know, our current photonics technology, there's no way I can send a single photon from here to China without there being a very high probability that it gets lost in the fiber somewhere.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 44:25 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Preskill: Many classical computer algorithms were discovered empirically through experimentation
“A lot of classical algorithms that, that people use on today's computers were discovered, or that they were powerful, was discovered by experimenting, you know, by trying it.”
John Preskill May 16, 2018 ▶ 1:13:30 John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator

The other half of the tape: John Preskill's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Leonard Susskind 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112018episodesmentions
0112018episodes it came up in
000.50.5112018episodesmentions per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
John Preskill on Quantum Computing · Y Combinator May 16, 2018 1h 13m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more