Quantum Computing and AI
Posting this just to mark the date: February 19, 2025.
Today, Microsoft has announced Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum processor powered by topological qubits, marking a significant milestone in quantum computing. This processor is designed to scale up to 1 million qubits on a single chip and introduces a new architecture leveraging Majorana particles and principles of topological quantum computing.
For a bit more detail on what a Majorana quasi-particle is and how fault-tolerant quantum computing can be achieved using topological qubits, check out this video:
What’s remarkable is that xAI released Grok-3 just two days ago, on Monday February 17, 2025, surpassing all key benchmarks in mathematics, science, and coding. It has claimed the top spot on multiple large language model (LLM) leaderboards.
Here’s a timeline of recent major AI and tech releases:
Sep 12, 2024 - o1-preview released
Dec 5, 2024 - o1 released
Dec 20, 2024 - o3 announced
Jan 20, 2025 - DeepSeek R1 released
Jan 30, 2025 - Qwen 2.5 Max released
Jan 31, 2025 - o3-mini released
Feb 5, 2025 - Gemini 2.0 Pro released
Feb 17, 2025 - Grok-3 released
The AI race is incredibly fierce, and the pace of progress continues to accelerate. The acceleration is accelerating.
When scalable quantum computing is paired with AI, it’s not hard to imagine it'll be able to unlock groundbreaking scientific discoveries. These could include advancements in materials science, chemistry and drug discovery, precise climate modeling, and even breakthroughs in stagnant areas of particle physics.
When Grok-3 was released and demoed, Elon Musk and his staff speculated whether breakthroughs achieved by experts with the help of AI could lead to prestigious awards like the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, or Turing Award. They suggested such achievements might occur as soon as this year (2025) or the next (2026).
Sam Altman also recently said in a Reddit AMA: “I personally think a fast takeoff is more plausible than I thought a couple of years ago. Probably time to write something about this...” Fast takeoff refers to a scenario where rapid advancements in AI leave little time for society to adapt to the resulting socio-economic changes and disruptions.
Folks, it’s time to fasten our seatbelts.