In October 2019, researchers at Google announced to great fanfare that their embryonic quantum computer had solved a problem that would overwhelm the best supercomputers. Some said the milestone, known as quantum supremacy, marked the dawn of the age of quantum computing. However, Greg Kuperberg, a mathematician at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in quantum computing, wasn’t so impressed. He had expected Google to aim for a goal that is less flashy but, he says, far more important.
