Key facts
- PSI said its research system included an unreleased Anthropic model and proved the conjecture within three days.
- The Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture has been open since 2000s and concerns when quantum computers can be much faster than ordinary computers.
- PSI said the proof shows quantum speedups require special structure, limiting what quantum computers can do.
- Guy Newman, Daniel Ran and Umesh Vazirani's earlier work was not mentioned in the report.
Physical Superintelligence Inc., a physics research lab, said on November 6 that it had used an unreleased model from Anthropic to prove the Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture, a question in quantum computing that the lab said has been open since 2008. The conjecture concerns when quantum computers can be significantly faster than ordinary computers.
The lab said the research system, developed by PSI technical staff member David Turturean, proved the conjecture within three days. PSI described the result as settling one of the most fundamental questions in quantum computing. It did not say which Anthropic model was used, and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
According to PSI, the proof shows that certain exponential advantages of quantum computing require special patterns or structures, meaning quantum computers have limits, something long suspected. Quantum computers exist but remain in early stages of development.
Researchers who had previously worked on the problem, Guy Blanc, Jordan Docter, Carmen Strassle and Li-Yang Tan of Stanford University, said the proof was a huge result that resolved a decades-old question, according to PSI's announcement. They said: "Everything is brought together in a rather magical way."