Oh, well if they can’t play Crysis, they’re useless.
It’s a bit of false scare because encryption technology is improving faster than quantum computing is, at least for now. It’s true quantum computing will be able to break our current encryption schemes in X number of years but we’ll have switched to new & improved encryption methods by then.
Unless quantum computing begins to outpace encryption tech there’s not much to worry about.
Well, it’s worth worrying about if you’re in charge of implementing cryptography for something important. It’s not just going to upgrade itself, after all.
But it’s definitely in the category of “problems that can be fixed”, not “problems that will doom us all”.
Thanks - that’s basically what I wanted to know. I mean, not gaming specifically, but more a matter of whether quantum computers are a paradigm shift in computing in general (as the public perception seems to be), or just specialized machines that are really good at certain specific things. You’re saying it’s the latter.
With the qualifier that there probably are a number of other practical quantum algorithms out there, just waiting to be discovered. Quantum programming is a task that is very difficult for us humans, and we haven’t been at it for very long.
Still, that’ll probably just lead to a slightly longer short list of specialized applications they’re good at.
While there are only a few verified quantum algorithms, remember that the “computers” available are just barely suitable for verifying that the algorithms can run at all. I always try to remember the following quote when making pronouncements on the future of quantum computers:
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
–Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM; 1943
I’m pretty sure a computer capable of that would collapse into a black hole.
To be clearer: One can envision a world populated by people for who quantum mechanics is intuitive, and the people of that world might well use quantum computers for all sorts of ingenious things, resulting in them being as ubiquitous as classical computers are in our world. But we don’t live in that world. In our world, it takes a rare sort of genius to be able to come up with anything a quantum computer is good for. Want another application? Find another genius.
I suppose we might eventually get to the point where we attach a quantum computer as a module to a deep-learning AI system, and let it figure out on its own what to use it for and how. But think-boxes that we can’t figure out how they work don’t have the same sort of practicality as what we currently think of as computers.