There is one very important thing that current quantum computers can do that classical computers cannot: They can be actual, real-life quantum systems.

Have we ever had such a large, clean and controllable quantum system to prod and poke?

Not that I know of!

Which means that these devices represent a relatively unexplored corner of the universe, where we can test that the predictions of quantum mechanics still apply.

Of course, we are 1000% sure that QM is correct. Nevertheless, testing theories is what science is all about.

Qiskit Ignis has a bunch of verification tools for making sure devices are working the way they should (or quantifying how much they are not). There is all kinds of useful stuff in there!

https://github.com/Qiskit/qiskit-tutorials/tree/master/tutorials/noise

Some are based on testing the ideas behind quantum error correction. QEC theory predicts that using more qubits ensures that problematic errors become less likely. But does your favourite device achieve that for the simplest form of QEC?

Turns out that my favourite device does!

I wrote a paper based on what these QEC tools are, what you could help us expand them to become, and how you can use them. It was recently published in @QuantSciTech. And it's open access, so no need to worry about a paywall (or going to the arXiv).

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-9565/aba038

For something shorter, I also wrote a blog post about it.

So stop thinking of the imperfections in devices as a bad thing, and start thinking of them as something to explore and understand. Maybe in another blog post, you can tell us what you found. https://medium.com/qiskit/heres-how-to-test-error-correction-on-an-ibm-quantum-computer-ecb086606e7