Adam Engst Does Not Understand Quantum Computing Either ⇥ tidbits.com

Adam Engst, riffing for TidBits on my confused reaction to recent breakthroughs from Google and Microsoft:

Perhaps it was inevitable. Companies like Microsoft and Google invest billions of dollars in fundamental research (which is good!), but their marketing departments (whom I suspect don’t understand quantum computing either) can’t help but search for user benefits for their announcements. The result is cognitive dissonance — it’s hard to imagine these companies’ quantum products solving the world’s ills when Google users complain about the quality of search results and Microsoft users frequently swear at Teams and OneDrive. Meanwhile, university labs that make significant strides in quantum computing rarely make it into mainstream tech news.

I think the marketing of these inventions is most of what tripped me up. If you divorce the consumer-type sales pitches from Google, Microsoft, and now Amazon from the likely uses for these computers, it seems to make more sense. Think of them in the realm of a supercomputer or, as Engst writes, the “mainframes of the future”. If they work — if — the distance between them and the effects you and I may feel is going to be vast.