Google announced on Monday that it had solved a complex quantum computing problem in five minutes using a new generation of chips, which would have taken a classical computer a longer time than the universe’s history.

Alphabet’s Google is pursuing quantum computing, like other corporate behemoths like Microsoft and International Business Machines (IBM), because it promises to achieve computer speeds that are significantly quicker than those of the most advanced systems available now. While there are currently no commercial applications for the arithmetic problem solved by the company’s Santa Barbara, California, quantum lab, Google expects that quantum computers can eventually solve issues in artificial intelligence, medicine, and battery chemistry that are beyond the capabilities of current computers.

A new chip named Willow, which has 105 “qubits,” the fundamental units of quantum computers, produced the findings that were made public on Monday. Despite their speed, qubits are prone to errors because they can be jostled by subatomic particles or events in space.

A semiconductor may become no more advanced than a standard computer chip when more qubits are crammed onto it. Scientists have been working on quantum error correction since the 1990s.

Google said in an article published Monday in the journal Nature that it has discovered a method to connect the qubits of the Willow chip in such a way that error rates decrease with increasing qubit count. Additionally, the business claims that it can instantly fix mistakes, which is a crucial step in making its quantum machines workable.

In an interview, Hartmut Neven, the head of Google’s Quantum AI division, stated, “We are past the break-even point.”

Using differing technical assumptions about a classical system, IBM contested Google’s claim in 2019 that its quantum processor solved a problem that would take a conventional computer 10,000 years, claiming that the problem could be solved in two and a half days.

Google says it considered some of those worries in its most recent projections in a blog post on Monday. Google claimed that a traditional computer would still require a billion years to achieve the same outcomes as its newest chip, even in the most optimistic circumstances.

In an interview, Anthony Megrant, principal architect for Google Quantum AI, stated that while some of Google’s competitors are manufacturing circuits with more qubits than Google, Google is concentrated on creating the most dependable qubits possible.

Prior to creating its own specialized fabrication facility to create its Willow chips, Google used a shared facility at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The new facility, according to Megrant, would increase the speed at which Google can produce future chips, which are kept cold in enormous freezers known as cryostats for experimental purposes.

“If we have a good idea, we want somebody on the team to be able to… get that into the clean room and into one of these cryostats as fast as possible, so we can get lots of cycles of learning,” Megrant explained.

For overlooked status changes, Meta’s well-known social messaging app WhatsApp has introduced a new reminder notification option.

Previously in testing, this functionality is now available to Android users who are engaged in WhatsApp’s beta program. WhatsApp for Android’s 2.24.25.29 beta version has the feature, which notifies users of unseen status updates and unread messages.

Users can access the “Settings” menu, select “Notifications,” and then go to the “Reminders” option to enable or disable the feature.

An internal mechanism is used to choose which contacts would receive these notifications, according to WABetaInfo. Contacts with whom users communicate the most are given priority by this algorithm. The data is not saved on the server or in backups, so if the user reinstalls the application, the algorithm is reset.

Some people think that the function would be more useful if it allowed users to personalise notifications for specific contacts, even if it is intended to alert users of updates from their most-interacted contacts.

Joining the beta program offers early access to this update for individuals who are keen to test it out before the stable release.

On Thursday, OpenAI released a $200/month version of its well-liked chatbot ChatGPT, which can be utilized for research and engineering disciplines as the AI company seeks to increase the number of industry uses for its technology.

The ChatGPT Pro tier will supplement OpenAI’s current ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise subscriptions. It demonstrates the company’s aspirations to expand the commercialization of its technology, which precipitated the AI boom.

The most cutting-edge OpenAI capabilities, such as its new reasoning model o1, o1 small, GPT-4o, and enhanced voice, will be available to users of ChatGPT Pro without limits, according to the business.

Additionally, the subscription includes O1 Pro Mode, a version that solves more complicated queries by using more processing power.

The o1 pro mode outperforms the o1 and o1 preview versions on machine learning benchmarks in math, science, and coding, according to OpenAI.

Three months after stepping down as president, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman announced on X Tuesday that he has rejoined the artificial intelligence startup.

A representative for OpenAI verified Brockman’s return.

Bloomberg News, the original source of the story, stated that Brockman has been collaborating with CEO Sam Altman to design a new position that would allow him to concentrate on important technological issues.

On X, he wrote, “I’ve had the longest vacation of my life.” returning to @OpenAI’s construction.