I can't intuit whether "advantage" has some specific meaning here, but an advantage, in the dictionary definition sense, is the fact that photonic quantum systems easily operate at room temperature, unlike, say, electron-based systems.
"Quantum Advantage" and the synonymous "Quantum Supremacy" (considered somewhat inappropriate because of other uses of the same word in racist orgs) are recently established "terms of art" in this field. They refer to "an experiment that unambiguously demonstrates computational capabilities unreachable by a classical supercomputer". Importantly, it is not really expected that the computation in question would be something useful, rather just something classically difficult as a proof of concept. I would say "useful quantum supremacy/advantage" experiments are not yet demonstrated and will take a few more years (maybe almost a decade). Still, the progress since conceiving this field in the early 90s is astronomical.
> considered somewhat inappropriate because of other uses of the same word in racist orgs
are we really in a time where "double plus good" is the only acceptable way to indicate that something is better or do we have to point out that racists probably also used each of these words in problematic contexts?
As someone who works in the quantum info / computation / foundations field I prefer "advantage" to "supremacy" not just because of all the racists using the word "supremacy" but also because advantage is more accurate. For me "supremacy" would indicate that quantum computers are convincingly beating classical ones for all or most problems at sufficiently large scale. I.e. if you're google or whatever you're buying quantum computers and using them for a big chunk of you computing needs.
This scenario is (in my opinion) overwhelmingly unlikely to occur during my lifetime (or ever). Classical computers aren't going anywhere. Quantum advantage conveys the reality that there are some problems that using quantum computers gives you advantages for, but others for which you should be using classical computation.
"Advantage" sounds quite a bit better than "double-plus good", but I get your point.
I personally like the sound of "quantum supremacy" and think it sounds cool, but it really does not seem worthwhile to die on this hill. If some people have ruined the word and given it extremely negative connotations in the minds of many of my colleagues, why would I insist on using it. For a comically extreme extension of this principle: the swastika used to be a pretty positive symbol, but it was ruined as such. It is not the first time that we as a community have decided that a common symbol/word is "ruined" and I do not particularly care where we place the line on what is considered "ruined".
Naively, i kind of feel like advantage is a better term. Supremacy feels like it has implications that quantum computers have overcome all obstacles, which seems a bit much for a contrived problem with no real world applications
Apparently, yes. Lots of organizations felt the need to rename the master branch, so, what other proof do you need?
As a side note, I grew up in communism, and it would be funny if it wouldn't be sad how much of a feeling of deja-vu this all is. Many people mistake this for a form of "enlightenment" but it's really just a form of herd behavior most of the time :(
>> Still, the progress since conceiving this field in the early 90s is astronomical.
I know next to nothing about quantum computers but I note that the first programmable computers were created a few years after Alan Turing's "On computable numbers" in 1936. In fact, after Turing described a Universal Turing Machine, programmable computers started appearing left and right with many groups in the USA and Europe at least building their own [1].
What I mean by this is that, as someone who doesn't know much about quantum computing, it seems that any practical applications of the approaches that are frequently hailed as breakthroughs in the lay press seem to be taking a much longer time than I'd expect, given the prior of classical computers and how fast they were possible to implement in practice and start using for real.
Probably this means that creating a quantum computer is a much harder problem - but then, that's perhaps something to keep in mind when trying to make sense of the reported progress in the field, for those outside it?
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[1] Oh and let's not forget Charles Babbage and his analytical engine, never fully built but nevertheless perfectly serviceable (at least on paper). And the work of just one man (who incidentally also invented feature creep at the same time).
I would say it is legitimately much more difficult. Pretty much since the conception of quantum mechanics up until around year 2000 most luminaries of the field would say "it is impossible to harness single-particle quantum effects, all human tech would be based on collective behavior". And to realize a quantum advantage you need those single-particle effects. Kinda like asking Babbage to build the analytical engine before the wheel (let alone the cog) was invented.
Another thing to keep in mind: Creation of a working quantum computer would be a monumental achievement, letting humans harness the full computational power of nature's laws, a defining moment in a civilizations technical capabilities, etc. However, there are only a handful of computational problems at which quantum computers would be exponentially better than classical (most notably simulating novel materials and drugs and certain optimization problems). While these problems are simply impossible on classical computers, for the majority of other problems classical and quantum computers would be on equal footing.
