Quantum computing: The tech revolution that wasn’t

From ChatGPT to Apple Vision Pro, the latest tech products garner a lot of hype. But while AI chatbots have the potential to change our relationship with the internet, and spatial computing could do the same to the world around us, these tech developments might also fizzle out. Hype does not always result in success in the long run.

To understand why that is, we need to look at concepts that just never lived up to expectations, and quantum computing is a giant among them. In 2019 this was heralded as a possible game changer; a technology that would make super-computers obsolete and bring us the answers to the knottiest questions of the universe in an instant.

Four years on that future hasn’t materialized, and Amit Joshi thinks it will be another 10 to 15 years until it does. In conversation with Mike Wade, he discusses why quantum computing now faces an engineering problem, and what the future holds for lightspeed processing power.