Gamers defeated quantum computer in their own games

Recently ScienceAtHome, a Danish team of scientists, game developers, designers and artists developed Quantum Moves, a game that lets gamers simulate quantum computing tasks. In the game, players need to perform tasks like dragging their mouse movements to simulate the laser beams used in the real quantum lab to move the atoms onto the right path. And as a result, some gamers outperformed actual quantum computers at these quantum tasks.

Gif from ScienceNews: playerstransporting fluid, representing an atom in a quantum computer, to a target location (purple box). If the player makes a wrong move, the fluid will spread uncontrollably.

The scientists of ScienceAtHome were surprised to find that humans can come to better solutions than quantum computers. Perhaps the computers’ algorithms are not perfect at the moment, or perhaps there really is something to the whole gaming thing.

ScienceAtHome concluded that when the human mind and computers work together, it yields the best result:

“Maybe we have a tendency to make it too academic and too scary, this world of quantumness. What our games do is they sort of force you to form a quantum intuition.”

— ScienceAtHome physicist Jacob Sherson 

So far, Quantum Moves has seen more than three million plays, and is available to be downloaded on PC, Mac, and smartphones. 

Besides Quantum Moves, ScienceAtHome has more physics and cognitive science related games in their webpage.