Google is putting its supreme algorithm to work. In October, the company announced that they had reached quantum supremacy 鈥� the point at which a quantum computer can complete a task that no classical computer could practically achieve 鈥� with an algorithm that could verify that a given set of numbers was randomly distributed. Now, that algorithm is finding its first practical use as a random number generator.
Alan Ho at Google announced this new application at the Q2B conference in California on 12 December. It uses the original algorithm, run on the Sycamore quantum computer, to generate random strings of bits. Then a classical computer converts those bits into random numbers. This all happens within 200 seconds, Ho said in his presentation.
鈥淏y itself that is profoundly unimpressive. There are many, many easier ways to generate random bits,鈥� said Scott Aaronson at the University of Texas at Austin, during another session at the conference. He consulted with Google on this project.
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鈥淏ut if you want to prove to a skeptic, say on the internet, that these bits really are random鈥� you could not have responded this quickly and passed this test unless you were using a quantum computer,鈥� he said.
It would take the best classical computer we have a few tens of hours to generate a string of truly random numbers. The many-fold increase in speed that Google demonstrated is proof of quantum randomness, Ho said. 鈥淚f you know that the quantum algorithm can get these random numbers far faster than the best known classical algorithm, that鈥檚 a guarantee of randomness,鈥� he said.
Truly random number generation could be put to use in cryptography, where large random numbers are used to ensure the secure transfer of data, or in simpler applications like lotteries, Ho said. Google is planning to launch a service providing quantum computer-generated random numbers to customers at some point in 2020, he said.
