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RETRACTED ARTICLE: Quantum problems solved through games

Nature volume 532, pages 184–185 (2016)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 27 April 2016

This article has been updated

Humans are better than computers at performing certain tasks because of their intuition and superior visual processing. Video games are now being used to channel these abilities to solve problems in quantum physics. See Letter p.210

In March, the mobile-game developer Supercell released a video thanking the 100 million people around the world who play its games daily1. According to estimates, by the age of 21 the average US citizen has spent more than 10,000 hours playing video games2 — the equivalent of working in a full-time job of 40 hours per week for five years. So is it possible to channel the enormous amount of human brainpower used in this way by designing games that have a purpose? More specifically, can video games be developed in which people solve computationally intractable research problems as a side effect of playing? Writing on page 210 of this issue, Sørensen et al.3 answer this question with a resounding 'yes'. They have developed video games that help to solve a problem relating to the realization of a new, efficient and scalable architecture for a quantum computer.

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Figure 1: The online game BringHomeWater.

Change history

  • 18 April 2016

    Reference 7 in the reference list was incorrect. This has now been corrected.

Notes

  1. See all news & views

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sabrina Maniscalco is at the Turku Centre for Quantum Physics, University of Turku, Turku 20014, Finland.,

    Sabrina Maniscalco

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  1. Sabrina Maniscalco
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Correspondence to Sabrina Maniscalco.

Additional information

RetractionIn view of the fact that the authors of ‘Exploring the quantum speed limit with computer games’ (J. J. W. H. Sørensen et al. Nature 532, 210–213; 2016) are retracting their report, the author has retracted this News and Views article, which dealt with the study and was based on the accuracy and reproducibility of the data in the paper.

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Maniscalco, S. RETRACTED ARTICLE: Quantum problems solved through games. Nature 532, 184–185 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/532184a

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