Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.

Seriously? Since he couldn't be where he is today if he actually believed what he said, this guy just seems to be desperately saying anything to get media attention, including naming his department "Google Quantum AI".

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Modern supercomputers can do computations that would take a person computing on the fastest abacus 10 septillion years which vastly exceeds the age of the universe, so do we live in a multiverse squared?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I think the argument is (I'm no physicist) that quantum states and thus its computing happen in all universes and that's why it is so fast. But if we think of parallel universes where each possible decision creates another one then quantum processing would inherently get faster and faster with time? Or would it get slower and slower with more and more universes using quantum processors and thus hogging quantum states?
Either way, sounds like marketing bullshit, like the big "AI" hype behind LLMs.