Theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson explains the primary real-world scientific applications that justify interest in quantum computing.
Opinion
Aaronson: Human stupidity is a bigger near-term threat than superintelligent AI
“When I think about, like, the future of civilization, you know, let's say the next 20 years, the next 50 years, I tend to worry less about super intelligence than I do about super stupidity. You know, I tend to worry about, you know, killing ourselves off or y…”
Insight
Aaronson: Quantum error correction turned scaling into an engineering challenge
“What changed everything for most of us in the nineties was the discovery of quantum error correction, right? And quantum fault tolerance. The upshot of which was if you want to build a scalable quantum computer, you don't need to get perfect qubits. That are p…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Aaronson: Certified randomness may be quantum computing's first near-term application
“As far as I can see, may be the first application of quantum computing that people could actually be able to realize with, like, near-term devices with 50 or 60 or 70 qubits. And this application is to generate cryptographically secure random bits.”
Assertion Supported
Aaronson: Differential privacy and quantum shadow tomography share a mathematical connection
“There's a, you know, precise mathematical connection between these two problems. You can prove it. You know, it goes in both directions, and then we were actually able to use it to, you know, take work that's been done in differential privacy by people who don…”
Assertion Supported
Aaronson: Holographic bulk-boundary mapping is a quantum error-correcting code
“The mapping between the bulk theory and the boundary theory in recent years, people realize that it is literally an example of one of these quantum error correcting codes that I talked, told you about before.”
Assertion Supported
Aaronson: Snowden documents revealed NIST pseudorandom standard was NSA-backdoored
“In fact, you know, NIST did have a standard for pseudorandom bits, which we learned a few years ago because of the Snowden documents was backdoored. By most likely by the NSA, right?”