In a Monday blog post, Hartmut Neven, founder and lead for Google Quantum AI, said the Willow chip paves the way for a full-scale quantum computer that can “benefit society by advancing scientific discovery, developing helpful applications, and tackling some of society’s greatest challenges.”

After Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced Willow on social media, X CEO Elon Musk responded with a “wow” and engaged in a back and forth with Pichai, who said, “We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day :).” 

“That will probably happen,” Musk replied.

Why is Willow so special?

To break Willow down in simple terms: A quantum chip, like the one developed here by Google, can perform computations that would take regular computers longer than the age of the universe to execute. Benchmarks, for those unfamiliar, are challenges that all computers try to solve to help us humans understand which one is the fastest, or best, at solving a particular problem.

What sets Willow apart is its ability to learn from its mistakes. While regular computers can frequently err in problem-solving, Google claims Willow actually gets smarter as it uses more qubits, which are the units of computation in quantum computers. It’s like building an incredibly high tower, but instead of wobbling more as it grows taller, it gets even steadier—at least, that’s what Google is claiming about Willow. This has been a challenge that’s existed in quantum error correction for nearly 30 years, according to Neven, who insists Willow reduces errors “exponentially” as it scales up.

Neven says Willow can fix its mistakes in real time: like having an eraser that works faster than you can color outside the lines. It essentially results in a computer that can solve computations perfectly, erasing mistakes as it goes.

“This is the most convincing prototype for a scalable logical qubit built to date,” he said. “It’s a strong sign that useful, very large quantum computers can indeed be built.”

One of the biggest achievements of Willow so far, according to Neven, is that it solved a mathematical puzzle in five minutes. At first glance, that doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you consider that Google claims it would take a regular computer 10 septillion years to solve that same puzzle. It’s this kind of functionality that leads Google to believe Willow can help humans discover new medicines, conceptualize next-generation batteries, and ultimately help our planet save energy.

For what it’s worth, many tech companies, including Google, have a history of exaggerated claims over so-called breakthroughs in quantum computing. But Google, Musk, and others seem to be very excited about Willow—to the extent that the company has decided to make open-source software available, as well as a new Coursera course, to help developers, researchers, and engineers “create algorithms that can solve the problems of the future.”