Anthropic says Claude Mythos 5 designed quantum circuits that beat the best published designs, sometimes by an order of magnitude
New from our STEM Fellows Program: Designing more efficient quantum circuits with Claude. Given plain-language instructions, Claude Mythos 5 designed quantum circuits that improve on the best published ones, sometimes by an order of magnitude or more. More efficient circuits reduce the resources needed by quantum algorithms, which could bring quantum computing applications in chemistry and materials science within reach sooner. Read more:
Context
Cheaper quantum circuits reduce the hardware needed for useful quantum computing, so AI that finds them could bring practical applications closer.
This is a first hand research post from Anthropic's STEM Fellows Program, done with Harvard and QuEra researchers and backed by a paper on arXiv. The improvements are Anthropic's own claims and have not yet been independently confirmed.
Deep dive
On October 16, Anthropic posted that, given plain language instructions, Claude Mythos 5 designed quantum circuits that improve on the best published ones, sometimes by an order of magnitude or more, and that more efficient circuits could bring quantum applications in chemistry and materials science within reach sooner.
Anthropic's write up says it gave Claude plain language specifications for eight circuits from chemistry, optimization, physics simulation and number theory, plus an automated evaluator that checked each design and scored it on qubits times gates. Working in a closed loop with little human input, Claude found designs that used fewer qubits and fewer gates than the best previous ones in each case.
In one example, after a 53 hour run, Claude produced a new reversible method for modular inversion, the costliest step in elliptic curve point addition, and checked a key formula in the Lean proof assistant. One resulting design uses 12% more qubits but 17 times fewer gates than the smallest previous design. In another, it made the decoder in a quantum optimization method about 12 times cheaper than Google's earlier construction.
Anthropic noted that Claude was often overly cautious and preferred known approaches unless prompted to explore. The work was led by fellow Andi Gu with Harvard's Susanne Yelin and Mikhail Lukin.
What to expect next
Watch for independent checks of the circuits by other quantum research groups and for peer review of the arXiv paper.
Also watch whether quantum hardware companies adopt the designs, and whether the elliptic curve results change estimates of when quantum computers could threaten current encryption. Anthropic's suggestion that AI could design whole error corrected systems will be worth following, as will any similar results from rival labs.