Quoting from the blog:
'Claude has proven particularly adept at optimizing classical algorithms, so we wanted to see whether it could do the same for quantum algorithms if it were given only a plain-language description of what each circuit must compute.
Claude is unusually well suited to this task, for several reasons. First, quantum algorithms are implemented as quantum circuits. These are composed of sequences of gates, like the Toffoli gates mentioned above. Importantly, these circuits can be described in code, so we can make use of Claude’s coding capabilities to write, run, and revise circuit designs as ordinary programs. Second, the (fairly common) class of quantum algorithms we were most interested in optimizing can be tested efficiently for correctness, as each input gives one definite output that an ordinary computer can check. This means we could have an external evaluator program validate Claude’s proposals. Finally, we can give Claude a clear, objective score to improve: the number of qubits used, multiplied by the number of gates, which serves as a proxy for how long the circuit would take to run.
We found that Claude Mythos 5 could successfully work in a closed loop, proposing a circuit design, receiving feedback and a score from the evaluator program, and using that feedback to improve its next attempt, with no human input between rounds. Across eight computational primitives—the basic routines that larger quantum algorithms are built from—for chemistry, optimization, quantum simulation, number theory, and numerical computing, Claude discovered novel designs that used both fewer qubits and fewer gates than the best previously published algorithms.'