14 DAY TRIAL // Only a few days ago, Google decided to show off its shiny new quantum computer that it's been playing with for the past few months. The Mountain View-based giant only the second company ever to buy a quantum computer and it's quite proud of that. It will probably be even prouder once the computer it bought is definitely proven to obey quantum physics rules.
Still, the company decided to put together a flashy video full of powerful sound bites, fast editing, and quirky locations, just the thing you'd expect from a Silicon Valley ad. Granted, the video says little about quantum computing and even less (basically nothing) about what Google has been doing with its latest toy until now.
But we can at least tell you exactly what Google is doing with its D-Wave quantum computer now: absolutely nothing. Google is working in partnership with NASA on the project. Luckily, the computer was booted up just a couple of days before the US government shutdown came in effect.
Shutting down the computer now is unreasonable; booting it back up is a complex procedure which takes time. But the people at NASA who are supposed to be working on the computer can't go anywhere near it. So, for now, Google has at its disposal a fully working and operational quantum computer, but it can't really do anything with it, as Wired reports.
"The lab is shut down, but the computer itself is still accessible and working," Google explained. But the company would not say whether it was actually doing anything with it, running any experiments or testing any new algorithms.
Apparently, one of the first things Google is doing or wants to do is improve the blink detection algorithm in Glass, which detects whether you winked at it to issue a command or just inadvertently blinked.
