The teapot test for quantum computers
Channel: Richard E Borcherds
Date: 2021-02-07

This lecture (or rant) is part of an online undergraduate course on the theory of numbers, and is an addendum to the lecture on RSA cryptography.

The teapot test is as follows: does an argument claiming that quantum computers now beat classical computers also show that teapots beat classical computers? Since teapots are not generally considered to be high performance computing devices, any argument not passing the teapot test is suspect. This lecture points out that so far (Feb 2021) none of the claims of quantum supremacy pass the teapot test. 

Factorizing large integers on the other hand does pass the teapot test (or at least it will when quantum computers get good enough to do this). 

Added later: see https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5460 for further discussion about whether a teapot really achieves teapot supremacy. The post https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/511067/why-is-googles-quantum-supremacy-experiment-impressive gives a similar comment about quantum supremacy, using a pudding instead of a teapot. 


For the other lectures in the course see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8yHsr3EFj52Qf7lc3HHvHRdIysxEcj1H