(Of course) algorithms beat gamers at solving quantum control problems

Abstract

Dries Sels and Allan Gr{\o}nlund have demonstrated numerical algorithms that outperform the players of our Quantum Moves game and they call the conclusions of our article Exploring the Quantum Speed Limit with Computer Games, Nature, 532, 210 (2016)] 'untenable'. Sels and Gr{\o}nlund ignore that our article already emphasizes that the players do not solve the quantum optimization challenge to any desired accuracy. Our key finding is that player solutions can be employed either as seeds for numerical optimization algorithms or as guidance towards low-dimensional representations of the solutions.