Thursday, January 9, 2025

Quantum Computer Stocks Rise and Fall

Quantum computer startup stocks have been skyrocketing, as Dr. Bee notes, but Nvidia just threw cold water:
The shares of IonQ Inc. and other companies linked to quantum computing tumbled on Wednesday, after Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said that “very useful” quantum computers are likely decades away.

“If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side,” Huang said in a question-and-answer session during Nvidia’s analyst day. “If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”

Shares in Quantum Computing Inc., D-Wave Quantum Inc. and Rigetti Computing Inc. dropped more than 30%, while IonQ fell about 29%. These stocks have soared in recent months amid excitement about the technology’s potential, which was heightened last month following a quantum computing breakthrough by Alphabet Inc.

Nvidia has been profiting, a little, from the quantum computer hype and people simulate the QC on its processors.

I think that having a useful quantum computer in 20 years is optimistic. People do not usually invest, based on waiting 20 years to get a return.

Update: Dr. Quantum Supremacy weighs in:

yes, there’s a lot still to be done, and twenty years might well be correct. ...

On the other hand, I can’t say with certainty that high valuations are wrong! ...

For whatever it’s worth, my own family’s money is just sitting in index funds and CDs. I have no quantum computing investments of any kind.

Update: One of those QC companies responds:
Today’s classical computing hardware is limited by computational capacity and power requirements in ways that will likely prohibit society from ever being able to solve some of its most pressing problems.

IonQ’s current #AQ 36 Forte Enterprise systems are already providing insight to solutions for customers today, and our upcoming #AQ 64 Tempo systems in 2025 and next-generation #AQ 256 systems will enable us to tackle increasingly complex problems to deliver near-term business value. One of the areas facing the most significant potential disruption is strong AI, where we believe natively quantum AI will outperform classical AI.

No, quantum AI will not outperform classical AI in the next 50 years.

2 comments:

  1. Hm, we often hear this woo term "Quantum AI"....what is that exactly? I assume they are trying to say they will use Grover's algorithm to speed up searches on unsorted lists. I mean how REALLY applicable that is to AI applications is arguable, but it's the closest thing I can think of that would be useful. THat is, IF, and it's a HUGE GIGANTIC IF, "quantum computers" even ever provide a speed up by running Grover's algorithm. Grover's and Shor's algorithm, it seems were concocted with immense handwaving involved. There's no explanation on HOW they provide a speedup, just some "yadda yadda yadda" BOOM faster magickal algorithm! In algorithmic complexity theory (analyzing the run time efficiency and the limits of algorithms), there are sometimes used hypothetical devices to provide a speedup, usually to perform a proof for something else or to conjecture. These are called "oracles". It appears that Grover's and Shor's algorithm are gigantic practical jokes by academics to pass off a hypothetical oracle as an ACTUAL realizeable thing by using quantum woo woo magickal handwaving. I believe this is what happened, and the thing just snowballed ever since and grew legs. Old Grover and Shor are probably laughing their butts off, all the way to the bank! And in our perverted financial system, this practical joke has become a very lucrative phantom industry "worth" billions and billions!

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  2. There's quite a bit of hand wringing about this going on over at the blog of that grubby little rat Scott Aaronson. And it's interesting to note he's not personally invested in any of it, financially speaking. Other than having a cushy high salary job spewing pilpul-esque sophism, that is. That right there speaks volumes

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