Quantum computing has a great allure, but last year the physics Nobel Laureate Alain Aspect issued a caution. “It may be that quantum computers are as fantastic as we think they might be and allow us to solve problems we didn’t know how to solve, but we are not sure. It may be that at some point we find an ultimate obstacle that we cannot overcome.”
The President of SXSW, Hugh Forrest, said that “Everybody’s talking about AI right now, but we want our audience to know that quantum is the piece that’s coming behind that.”
SXSW devoted several sessions to quantum technology. One of these featured Dr. Charina Chou, Chief Operating Officer at Google Quantum AI. She gave the audience a primer on how to envisage quantum computing.
“Laptops, cell phones, data centers: they work using a fundamental unit of computing called a bit. The easiest way to understand this is to think about a light switch: there are two states. That’s exactly how bits work in classes of computing. You can have bits in the state of one or zero. On or off.
“And that is used to execute a lot of different logical operations: things like and, or, if. You know what happens in all of these cases and humans have been able to use bits to create all sorts of computation.
“Rather than needing to be in just zero or one, quantum bits can be in elements of zero and one at the same time. People wonder, how does that work? How do you think about that? How can I get my mind around it? It’s hard because it’s not something that we experience every day or something that makes sense.
“One picture that I use, which can be helpful, is thinking about a globe. Think about the North Pole and the South Pole. That can be your on or off, your one or zero. A quantum bit can be pointed at the North Pole or the South Pole: it’s a pure standard fit. But it can also be pointed in any different directions. And that gives it this zero and one character at the same time.
“What I would love for people to take home from this conversation, the one message would be that quantum computers are capable of solving problems that are impossible for AI super-computers.”
As you can see from the lead photo, Chou is passionate about quantum computing. She explained why the best existing supercomputers cannot solve the problems we need answers to.
“Nature itself is quantum mechanical. So, what does that mean? If you go outside, looking for leaves, trees, flowers, grass, cells in your body, chemical reactions happening underground, those are all quantum mechanical. They are fundamentally at their heart electrons, atoms, molecules, all interacting. That gives rise to all of the problems that we see in the world. And that is quantum mechanics. It is not zero, it is not one.”
This was emphasised in a separate SXSW session, where the CEO of IBM, Dr. Arvind Krishna, spoke of quantum and AI as “completely complementary” to one another.
“Once we get down to that level of subatomic knowledge, it tells us how nature behaves.” Tapping into that nature will lead to vastly greater knowledge. “That’s why I believe the two complement each other as opposed to compete with each other,” Krishna said.
Chou went on the explain the problem with our current methods of computation. “Right now what we’ve run into with classical computers is really a challenge, because people are trying to use zeros and ones to describe this very, very complex language of electrons and atoms. We’ve made some progress as a society: we’ve been able to make approximations, estimations, but we do not calculate exactly the properties of most molecules in the universe. The ability to use one computer that fundamentally employs quantum mechanics is going to be a game changer.”
“Google is trying to work on not just the qubits [quantum bits] themselves, but the full computer, all the hardware surrounding that software and the hardware, because we think that’s going to be good. You have to freeze these things to a temperature that is colder than space! We can do it in our labs. This is the coldest place in the universe. We have to get down to specifically a 10 millionth of a degree above absolute zero.”
Aside from the technical aspects, Chou also talked about generative AI and the use of AI to create imagery.
“You see amazing collaborations between AI and artists using it to create all sorts of new things. So one of the questions that we’ve been asked recently is about this idea of quantum noise.” In the field of computing, such noise is bad as it leads to errors. But artists are finding inspiration there; see below for a link to a quantum art exhibition.
“Think about how one can use this quantum noise to generate more natural images, more interesting images – things that somehow appeal to the human eye because we’re accustomed to seeing things nature that have come from quantum noise.
“And in a particular art show, there’s a dial that participants and viewers are able to see and turn up the quantum noise after first turning up the classical noise at the image generation. And qualitatively, we’ve seen that a lot of people prefer the large quantum noise, giving rise to the image. So that’s something that we’re really pushing on and kind of excited to see where that goes,” Chou concluded.
quantum art exhibition: https://innovationcenter.newschool.edu/quantum-art-exhibition/
Photos of Dr. Chou and Dr. Krishna by Dr. C Cunningham