“People in the know will be like: ‘Oh, it’s coming,'” says Bluvstein, who recently co-founded Oratomic, which aims to build the first useful quantum computer. “I think the world is not ready right now.”
The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, and many of the assumptions made by the authors are “untested,” says Jeff Thompson, an associate professor at Princeton and CEO of the atomic quantum computing startup Logical. “It’s very easy to reduce the size of a computer if you assume better qubits,” Thompson says.
On March 25, a week before the publication of the Google and Caltech papers, Google announced Deadline to secure our systems against quantum computers by 2029 – six years First NIST’s 2035 deadline.
AI leaders have Frequently Promise That AI will accelerate scientific progress. “The benefits to quality of life from AI accelerating scientific progress… will be huge,” wrote Sam Altman in 2025. In addition to cracking encryption protocols, quantum computing researchers hope the new technique can help make discoveries in physics and design new drugs and materials. Someday, they may help drive more powerful and efficient AI models. But according to Westerban, the development of quantum computers could lead to data leaks, extortion and businesses offline before the transition to post-quantum encryption.
