{
  "id": 19702633,
  "title": "AI confirms a long-suspected limit on quantum computers’ advantages",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/ai-confirms-a-long-suspected-limit-on-quantum-computers-advantages",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-12T20:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "New Scientist",
    "slug": "new-scientist",
    "url": "https://www.newscientist.com/article/2598418-ai-confirms-a-long-suspected-limit-on-quantum-computers-advantages/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A groundbreaking AI breakthrough has finally proven a long-standing mathematical conjecture about the capabilities of quantum computers. In 1999, Scott Aaronson proposed a question about when quantum computers could outperform conventional computers in solving mathematical problems. While they knew of one problem where quantum computers excel—Shor’s algorithm for factoring numbers—Aaronson questioned whether it could be applied in situations with little structure and lots of randomness instead. In 2011, Aaronson and Andris Ambainis formally conjectured that this was not the case, but they could not prove it. Now, David Turturean and his team at Physical Superintelligence have used Anthropic's Fable 5.2 AI model to provide the proof. This eliminates a whole class of problems from the race to understand what quantum computers are best at. The problem at the heart of the Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture requires a computer to answer a \"yes\" or \"no\" question after being fed a huge but random string of bits. The researchers suspected that a conventional computer could approximate the quantum computer's performance for most strings without having to take much longer, meaning you could get away with not using a quantum computer at all. Aaronson and Ambainis translated their conjecture into the language of polynomials, a different field of pure mathematics. The AI breakthrough builds on the work of other mathematicians, and took about 4 days for Fable 5.2 to complete, improve, and verify. The new proof surpasses all previous studies and reveals tricks that mathematicians can now learn from and reuse. While the practical implications of this work are unclear, it rules out a potential direction for finding quantum speedups and informs researchers where to look for new problems where quantum computers are uniquely positioned.",
  "summary": "AI-powered proof has rigorously proved that using quantum computers would not have huge advantages for a whole class of mathematical problems, confirming a vastly influential conjecture.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}