Thursday, March 12, 2026

Has Quantum Supremacy been Achieved?

Dominik Hangleiter writes in a new paper:
Recently, I gave a couple of perspective talks on quantum advantage, one at the annual retreat of the CIQC and one at a recent KITP programme. I started off by polling the audience on who believed quantum advantage had been achieved. Just this one, simple question.

The audience was mostly experimental and theoretical physicists with a few CS theory folks sprinkled in. I was sure that these audiences would be overwhelmingly convinced of the successful demonstration of quantum advantage. After all, more than half a decade has passed since the first experimental claim [AAB+19] of “quantum supremacy” as John Preskill called the idea “to perform tasks with controlled quantum systems going beyond what can be achieved with ordinary digital computers” ...

I could not have been more wrong: In both talks, less than half of the people in the audience thought that quantum advantage had been achieved.

After several pages describing the experiments, he concludes:
I hope that I could convince you that quantum advantage has been achieved. There are some open loopholes, but if you are happy with physics-level experimental evidence, then you should be convinced that the RCS experiments of the past years have demonstrated quantum advantage.
No. The whole point of quantum supremacy, aka advantage, is to do an experiment that convincingly demonstrates that super-Turing computers are possible. If most of the experts have not been convinced, then the principle has not be demonstrated.

I am a skeptic, and will be hard to convince. But they have not even convinced the experts who work in the field.

But read the paper, and make up your own mind.

Scott Aaronson seems to be still on the fence. His recent postings have been either about how he hates Pres. Trump, or how he agrees with Trump's pro-Israel foreign policy.

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Has Quantum Supremacy been Achieved?

Dominik Hangleiter 2603.09901">writes in a new paper : Recently, I gave a couple of perspective talks on quantum advantage, one at...