The AI–quantum computing mash-up: will it revolutionize science?

Call it the Avengers of futuristic computing. Put together two of the buzziest terms in technology — machine learning and quantum computers — and you get quantum machine learning. Like the Avengers comic books and films, which bring together an all-star cast of superheroes to build a dream team, the result is likely to attract a lot of attention. But in technology, as in fiction, it is important to come up with a good plot.

If quantum computers can ever be built at large-enough scales, they promise to solve certain problems much more efficiently than can ordinary…