Google Willow - Gen AI

While everyone watches AI, Google broke time itself. Their quantum chip just solved a problem that would outlast the universe — in 5 minutes. And this is just the start… What you need to know about Google Willow — and how it’ll transform humanity in 2030+.

Google tested Willow to see how powerful it was. The task: a problem called the Random Circuit Sampling (RCS) benchmark. It would take the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 SEPTILLION years to solve.

That number is crazy, by the way…

→ Number of years our universe has existed: 13,800,000,000.
→ What 10 septillion looks like: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Google Willow solved the RCS benchmark in 5 minutes.

Bits and Qubits

So let’s talk about computer chips for a sec. Chips in your laptop or desktop use “bits” for computations. A bit holds limited information. Why? Because it can be in only one of two states at a time: 0 or 1.

Meanwhile, chips in quantum computers use quantum bits… … or “qubits.” These can exist in multiple states at a time. Qubits used together EXPONENTIALLY increase computational power.

What makes Willow special is how it handles qubits. Qubits are powerful, but incredibly fragile. The more you increase them, the more likely they are to produce errors in computations.

This was the massive roadblock quantum computing has faced for 30 long years. But with Google Willow, adding more qubits actually REDUCES errors instead of creating them. The secret? Organizing qubits into grid configurations called “logical qubits.”

This leads to real-time error correction. I.e., operating “below threshold,” as theoretical computer scientist Peter Shor said in 1995. It’s a history-making accomplishment. And absolutely critical for building scalable quantum computers.

Why is this important to us “normal folk”? Because quantum computers will create innovations exponentially faster than regular computers. A few possibilities:

Quantum machine learning for AI
Optimizing traffic flow in smart cities
Vastly improved airline schedules
More efficient electric-vehicle batteries
Accelerated drug discovery for complex diseases
Quantum cryptography for super-secure communications In short, quantum computing will have INCREDIBLE impact on our lives.

Don’t expect to have a quantum laptop anytime soon, though. Willow is a huge leap forward, but we’re still years away from practical applications. It’s like the first computer from the 1940s — revolutionary, but not yet ready for your home.

Google’s own experts say we might not see commercial quantum computers until 2030. A few challenges ahead:

Increasing accuracy of operations
Developing more practical applications
Lowering cost of quantum computing time

And more still.

But Google says it’s on track with its goals. In 2019, the company released a roadmap for a quantum computer with commercial value. Hartmut Neven, founder of Google’s Quantum AI Lab, said they’re about halfway through. We’ve got an exciting few years ahead.

So for now, let’s celebrate. Willow is like the Wright brothers’ first flight — it proves what’s possible. We won’t be flying quantum jumbo jets soon… but Willow has opened infinite doors. And now, the quantum revolution is inevitable.

Author: Kevin Joey Chen