Quantum computing has already been destroyed by AlphaFold.

I work in the computational chemistry field and I’d really love a working quantum computing solution to that kind of problems, but since the ML solutions came up most research in that direction stopped and it does not seem like there is any nearing solution in the world of quantum computing.

I’m not talking about qubits numbers or amount of errors themselves in the system but about the complete lack of algorithms that can handle the problem. Most of what I’ve seen is handling childlike problems that a single core CPU will do better and quicker anyway. It really does not feel like all the promises that have been done are anywhere near to coming true.

When I speak with people working in the field they’re like: sure in a few years if we can get better computers we’ll be able to handle a few hundred atoms at a time (all without any actual working methodology and assuming that will be developed), however we are more commonly talking about hundreds of thousands of atoms… There’s little hope on my part that anything useful will come out of there soon. However, I do really hope it does: quantum computing would be a huge revolution for chemistry if it works as advertised.