This makes me wonder. It occurs once in a while that a student (although in this case a particular bright mind) solves a complicated problem where experienced researchers haven't.

One well known example that comes to mind is the famous George Dantzig case (he mistook 2 open statistics problems for an assignment, and promptly solved them).

Also in this case Tang apparently was hesitating to approach his his mentor Aaronson about this. And Aaronson also wanted additional scrutiny like presenting to limited audience before publication.

Why is it ? Are people just smarter when they are young ? Or is it fear of failure ? Or prejudice - it's unsolvable ?

I remember myself in college, cryptology class, where a fellow student invented a shortcut for some calculations. Back then, we didn't know whether it was a known formula or not, or even whether it was correct; we searched but couldn't find it mentioned anywhere. He never dared to tell the prof, but most of us actually used it successfully during our exams to assist and validate our calculations.

This might be coming up again because the paper was finally published, like in a journal after peer-review, one month ago [1]. The pre-print has been available since 2018 [2].

[1]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12... [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.00414

Scott Aaronson's blog post about this: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3880

HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17519001

My initial interpretation:

Previously we thought quantum algorithms were radical improvements over classical algorithms. Rather, where this improvement exists at all, it is actually coming from assumptions about the /non-computational/ 'input' preparation.

Here, analogously, we thought we had a better CPU, but we were actually just switched the HDD to an SSD.

I'd like to be more radical here and say that, perhaps, everything significant about quantum computers has nothing to do with their computational properties (ie., their discrete/sequential properties). But rather, comes from exploiting continuous features of their underlying material states.

I'd be grateful if any specialist were able to comment on that; as I think, were it true, we should probably say that "quantum computers" arent (mostly) computers at all -- they are more like "quantum hard-drives".

How is integer factoring not the best-known possible example of a quantum speed-up? What was special about this recommender system problem?

What a beautiful example of science building on itself. A new framework gave way to a new solution, and now that solution has been ported back to the old framework. It's a wonderful process.

I suspect a number of quantum advancements will be this type of two steps forward, one step back as people discover that the quantum part wasn't really necessary.

Does anyone know the best place that explains the algorithm to a less educated person? This article treats it as a black box.

"Millennials^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Zoomers killing another industry"

> "I was hesitant because it seemed like a hard problem when I looked at it, but it was the easiest of the problems he gave me"

For some reason I'm getting some major "Dantzig coming late into lecture" vibes here.

Any relationship between this and integer factoring?

What an amazing story and what a brilliant mind. I wish all the best to Tang and hope he would bring more wonders later on.

It doesn't take a genius to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Eventually quantum electrodynamics will go the way of geocentrics and the pancake earth. Unfortunately, there will always be charlatans around using sophisticated language to trick the best and brightest into believing absurdity after absurdity. However, quantum computing wins the Darwin award hands down.

Good on him, but this seems bittersweet to me.

This coupled with social media or search engine information can help determine mental states, world outlooks, and can be used to manipulate outcomes. A custom reality for customized behaviour.

Anyone knows if this is implemented anywhere?

>Kerenidis and Prakash proved that a quantum computer could solve the recommendation problem exponentially faster than any known algorithm

That's not a proof. It's a few hopeful examples.

The current proof only appears stunning to those who were formerly satisfied with weak evidence.