alt Hacker Newsthere is so much skepticism on quantum computing that instead of inflated marketing words one should always start by what the biggest problems are, how they are not still solved yet, and then introduce what the new improvement is.
Otherwise there is no knowing if the accomplishment is really significant or not.
Especially if you consider how they choose the words and how they can be interpreted
" Second, Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s "
Standard benchmark in what sense. Well, it was chosen for task where quantum computer would have better performance.
I am not saying this is nothing. Maybe, use more reserved words, e.g. "special quantum oriented benchmark" or something.
When I think of standard benchmark, I am thinking more common scenarios, e.g. searching, sorting, matrix multiplication.