An MBA, an engineer and a quantum computing physicist check into a hotel. Middle of the night, a small fire starts up on their floor.

The MBA wakes up, sees the fire, sees a fire extinguisher in the corner of the room, empties the fire extinguisher to put out the fire, then goes back to sleep.

The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, sees the fire extinguisher, estimates the extent of the fire, determines the exact amount of foam required to put it out including a reasonable tolerance, and dispenses exactly that amount to put out the fire, and then satisified that there is enough left in case of another fire, goes back to sleep.

The quantum computing physicist wakes up, sees the fire, observes the fire extinguisher, determines that there is a viable path to practical fire extinguishment, and goes back to sleep.

Meanwhile Schrodinger's cat sleeps peacefully in their carrier.

Not quite sure why all the responses here are so cynical. I mean, it's a genuinely difficult set of problems, so of course the first steps will be small. Today's computers are the result of 80 astonishing years of sustained innovation by millions of brilliant people.

Even as a Googler I can find plenty of reasons to be cynical about Google (many involving AI), but the quantum computing research lab is not one of them. It's actual scientific research, funded (I assume) mostly out of advertising dollars, and it's not building something socially problematic. So why all the grief?

I completed my degree in computer science at age 22 - at that time Shor had just published his famous algorithm and the industry press was filled with articles on how quantum computing was just a few years away with just a few technical hurdles yet to be solved.

I turned 50 years old this year, forgive an old man a few chuckles.

Charlie Brown, Lucy, football