Was pleasantly surprised to see the exact bug in here, in a "The Register" article of all places. Legg showed that fixing the bug invalidates the research. Seems Microsoft is responding to a clear problem with a vague dismissal.
Edit: Oh, The Register is a true tech paper, guess the name makes sense for that. Got mixed up cause there are a bunch of general papers called something Register.
mjhay 27 minutes ago [-]
You’d really think they’d really check everything and cross their t’s after their previous issues in marjorana fermion QC. I generally have a very high opinion of MS research, but this is getting a bit embarrassing.
rdtsc 27 minutes ago [-]
> boffins willing to go on the record as describing Microsoft's work as "unreliable" and perhaps even "fraudulent."
> Microsoft insisted its work is sound and in early June 2026 announced Majorana 2, a "next-generation topological quantum chip" it developed with the help of its own agentic AI.
AI hallucinates quantum computing bullshit as well or better than humans can hallucinate quantum computing bullshit. Couldn't have a better combination of technologies helping each other out.
frollogaston 17 minutes ago [-]
The kinds of bugs really look like human mistakes more than AI
gadders 40 minutes ago [-]
Love the word "boffin". I think we should use "pundit" more often as well.
happytoexplain 26 minutes ago [-]
I was surprised to see it - I thought "boffin" was good-natured but highly irreverent, like "nerd". But I can't imagine any publication writing the headline, "Computer nerd claims Microsoft's supposed quantum leap does not compute."
wiml 23 minutes ago [-]
"Good natured but highly irreverent" is pretty much The Register's house style.
SAI_Peregrinus 24 minutes ago [-]
The Register is highly irreverent, as a rule.
cpncrunch 23 minutes ago [-]
It's typical of the Register. They always use the word "boffin" for expert/scientist. It's a british word used to describe a clever person.
sensanaty 20 minutes ago [-]
Completely unrelated but I'm always sad that Umbra, Penumbra and Equinox aren't used very often in day-to-day speech, very cool sounding words.
Anthony-G 31 minutes ago [-]
As soon as I saw this word, I guessed that El Reg was the source.
josefritzishere 15 minutes ago [-]
Is it premature to assume it's due to AI Microslop?
smartformulapro 39 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
frollogaston 35 minutes ago [-]
I don't think research papers normally come with a simple portable way for others to rerun the calculations. At some point the code is complicated enough to be impossible to just proofread without running it.
TaupeRanger 26 minutes ago [-]
Pretty sure you responded to an AI bot, looking at their comment history.
fennecbutt 23 minutes ago [-]
And the structure of their sentences, unless they're doing that on purpose for some reason
frollogaston 19 minutes ago [-]
Ok I don't normally call "bot" but yes it is. "It's not a sentence – it's a DSL"
brumbelow 28 minutes ago [-]
Yeah I would say that the 'some point' is frontier quantum research. Which makes it even more confusing as to how something like this is not caught.
m4gr4th34 20 minutes ago [-]
I actually have been fiddling with something like this. Self publishing on GitHub, numbers that are run in real time. If code can be open-sourced, I think research can start to be. I started using linux in 2019, and honestly, though I don't use it now (windows-turned-mac man, sigh), open source is a solid concept.
jMyles 21 minutes ago [-]
> I don't think research papers normally come with a simple portable way for others to rerun the calculations.
...which, for situations where a readable/narrated test suite is entirely possible, is awful.
m4gr4th34 18 minutes ago [-]
I actually created a template to make research dossiers to do exactly that on GitHub. it works, and self hosts, and has a DOI, and blockchain timestamps... I'm a quantum physicist that left academia cause it was too slow for my taste, and I think the technology is here now for open-sourcing science research.
frollogaston 19 minutes ago [-]
Research code is stereotypically awful
Rendered at 16:32:30 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Edit: Oh, The Register is a true tech paper, guess the name makes sense for that. Got mixed up cause there are a bunch of general papers called something Register.
> Microsoft insisted its work is sound and in early June 2026 announced Majorana 2, a "next-generation topological quantum chip" it developed with the help of its own agentic AI.
AI hallucinates quantum computing bullshit as well or better than humans can hallucinate quantum computing bullshit. Couldn't have a better combination of technologies helping each other out.
...which, for situations where a readable/narrated test suite is entirely possible, is awful.