Physicists Say It Is a Flip of the Coin Whether Quantum Computing Will End up a Revolutionary Capability

 …Joe Altepeter, a program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO):  Of the 10 smartest physicists I know, about half of them are convinced that quantum computers are going to totally revolutionize computing in the 21st century and be a revolutionary way to solve problems from material science, to chemistry, to mathematics, to optimization…

The other half are convinced that it will never do anything that a regular or classical computer won’t be able to do. 

…When I think about strategic surprise, it’s hard for me to think of a discipline that has more potential for surprise than one where we think that it’s somewhere between totally revolutionary and totally useless. It’s somewhere in that zone. DARPA wants to try to bring some clarity to that question…

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