Science & Tech · Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (Generative AI, LLMs)
The concept being tested: Quantum computing technology and emerging computing paradigms.
Consider the following statements: I. It is expected that Majorana 1 chip will enable quantum computing. II. Majorana 1 chip has been introduced by Amazon Web Services (AWS). III. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning. Which of the statements given above are correct?
Majorana 1 is the topological-qubit quantum chip Microsoft unveiled in February 2025, built on a new engineered material it calls a topoconductor and designed to eventually scale to a million qubits on a single chip, so it is indeed positioned to enable practical quantum computing, making the first statement correct. The chip was developed and announced by Microsoft, not by Amazon Web Services, which has its own separate quantum effort built around a different chip called Ocelot, so the second statement wrongly transplants Microsoft's work onto AWS. The third statement rests on settled AI terminology, artificial intelligence contains machine learning, and deep learning, which uses multi-layered neural networks, is itself a subset of machine learning. With the first and third statements holding and the second failing on attribution, the correct combination is the first and third statements only.
What UPSC was testing
The question tests whether aspirants track which tech company owns which 2025 quantum computing breakthrough, since Microsoft's Majorana 1 and AWS's Ocelot chip were announced around the same time and are easy to confuse, while the deep learning statement is a stable AI fundamental thrown in to test basic conceptual clarity.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 8 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.