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Major quantum computing advance made obsolete by teenager (2018)
- tocs3 1y agoI listened to the "Joy of Y" podcast of an interview with Ewin Tang and thought it was an enlightening view of the current state of quantum computing. https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-true-promise-of-quantum-computing-20250403/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-true-promise-of-q... Edit: in light of a couple comments here I would like to say the podcast interview with Tang was this year. (May 3, 2025)
- ethan_smith 1y agoTang's recent work on quantum-inspired classical algorithms has sparked a whole subfield focused on identifying which quantum speedups are truly unique versus those that can be replicated classically.
- mutated_quant 1y agoQuantum computing occupies the same space that Nanotechnology used to hold, and AGI is trying to claim; something so profoundly game-changing that it'll rewrite the rules of society itself. Venture capitalists love this type of story, because its sells the most funding in future rounds. I wish more people would celebrate Tang's works as a genuine breakthrough, rather than a pin that's bursting the bubble of quantum computing hype.
- tocs3 1y agoVenture capitalists love this type of story, because its sells the most funding in future rounds. I would have thought the venture capitalists would not love this story so much because it, a little bit, points to quantum computing as being less of a do all sort of technology.
- lawlessone 1y ago[flagged]
- 2018adder 1y ago[flagged]
- sgt101 1y agoHer thesis is now available "Quantum Machine Learning without any Quantum" https://ewintang.com/assets/tang_thesis.pdf https://ewintang.com/assets/tang_thesis.pdf
- b0gb 1y agoA recommendation is in the domain of subjectivity, meaning that there is no consensus on the correctness... so, even if the algorithm is faster, its usefulness shouldn't be superior to a random pick based on some matching criteria... which is already as fast as it can be
- snapcaster 1y ago>superior to a random pick based on some matching criteria... this is a recommendation right? hard to understand your point here
- b0gb 1y agomy point is, the quantum part isn't (/wasn't) necessary in the first place...
- ylow 1y agoThe actual problem that is being solved here is well defined mathematically and is matrix completion via low rank matrix factorization. And using a sampling approach for it. (I have not read the paper in its entirety, just skimmed the intro a bit). It is called "recommendation system" largely due to some history around some of its common appplications (Netflix challenge). But this is not addressing the subjective recommendation problem, but a very particular instantiation of it.
- b0gb 1y agoYes, I get that..., my issue was with its application (a movie recommendation)... the idea itself isn't qualified for the quantum realm...
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoI don't see how this follows. Besides, "subjectivity" concerns the subject, "objectivity" the object. The former is a matter of how an object is received by the observer, and so all perception is subjective in that sense; it can't be otherwise. But the subject can become an object of another subject. We can infer with varying certainty what someone is more or less likely to enjoy based on our knowledge of what they like.
- fxtentacle 1y ago"Tang skipped the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in order to enroll at the University of Texas at Austin at the age of 14." Oh wow, that is either insanely cool, or a huge loss. At my university, there were so many great parties that I feel like you'd be seriously left out of everything social going on if you're underage when joining.
- sublinear 1y agoPeople don't necessarily need a school environment to find friends to party with. If anything this would open up more opportunities for them when they're at that age. What's stopping them from being invited to parties where they don't go to school anyway?
- drdeca 1y agoRegarding opening up more opportunities, are you suggesting that they might go to parties while others would be at school? With who(m)? I don’t mean to say that school is necessary for this, but I don’t think it is irrelevant either.
- adammarples 1y agoWell, they're 18 now and have university out of the way, I'm sure they can party as much as they want
- pyman 1y agoHey Ms. Tang, here's a little weekend project for you. There's this thing called Transformers and GenAI. The problem is, it doesn't scale. Propose a better architecture and call it AGI. (Fingers crossed)
- lompad 1y agoRelevant reading: "Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog" by Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus [0]. Shows in a humorous way how the vast majority of quantum computing "records" are utter nonsense based on simplifying the factorization so far, that it turns into a problem on the difficulty level of "factorize 9" - _before_ running the experiment. Journalists however tend to lack the knowledge to accurately represent that, resulting in nonsensical record claims. [0]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf
- djsavvy 1y agoVery hot take but this result made me believe that BQP and P might be equivalent computational classes (in other words, quantum computers might not offer any computational complexity speedups at all). I found out about this result in college and implemented the algorithm described in the paper for a class project, though I don't remember the code working very well haha
- dang 1y ago[stub for offtopicness] (Thanks to all who mentioned the year - we've since added to the title above.)
- ameliaquining 1y ago(2018)
- fuglede_ 1y ago(2018)
- tgv 1y agoWhen you read it, keep in mind it's from 2018. Otherwise it looks as if Tang was 7 or so when he started to work on the problem. In reality, he already was 17 (*). (*) yes, I know that it still very precocious.
- sequin 1y agoShe :)
- lukas099 1y agoAm I crazy, or does the article seem to go out of its way to avoid using any pronouns for Tang?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- luckydata 1y agomaybe they don't know the gender and playing it like at parties when you don't remember someone's boyfriend name.
- adammarples 1y agoNo because several times they directly quote people talking about Tang and editorialize the quote to use [Tang] where a pronoun would have been.
- dang 1y agoRelated. Others? Major Quantum Computing Advance Made Obsolete by Teenager (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28413023 - Sept 2021 (44 comments) Teenager Finds Classical Alternative to Quantum Recommendation Algorithm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17654220 - July 2018 (216 comments) Customers who liked this Recommendation Engine may also like its Dequantization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17519001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17519001 - July 2018 (30 comments)