What is Quantum Computing, how will it impact the world, and what are the main use cases?

What is Quantum Computing, how will it impact the world, and what are the main use cases?

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welcome to the experts experts in tech here we explore what makes companies successful in today's world my name is miguel and today we will be talking about quantum computing for this topic we are bringing for you our special guest angel gonzalez angel is working for ibm since 1997 yes 25 years and currently at the ibm research and development center in bubbling close to stuttgart in germany his current position is quantum computing ambassador the interview consists of four blocks the first one fundamentals second one application areas third one state of the art and the fourth one recommendations therefore if you want to learn how can you explore more about quantum computing and how can your company profit from this technology watch until the end [Music] hi angel welcome to the experts i'm very happy to have you with us today to learn more or to learn in general about quantum computing hi miguel thanks a lot for your invitation i'm honored to be here with you and with your audience today yeah well the the honor is mine before we start talking about quantum computing would you like to give a short introduction about yourself oh myself yes so i'm angel i'm working in ibm germany since uh i don't know how long i've perhaps said well yes 25 years well it's amazing to say that no i started my career in ibm spain 30 years ago but then i switched to ibm germany and currently i'm working in the research and development division of ibm near stuttgart no and but you know in all my career i have been done other things now i'm i've been supporting another technologies like blockchain if you remember it gave us the opportunity to meet each other for the first time thanks to blockchain technology now we are able to have this conversation together yes yes so yesterday was uh blockchain today is quantum computing and said the day before i don't know machine learning business intelligence massive i don't know i don't know how many emerging technologies have been done and yes and my title today is called ibm quantum ambassador which means that i can talk to my customers to my business partners and whatever but today you know this is a conversation between you and me this is a podcast this is a youtube video uh so we hope that that we talk here something which is uh well this is good for for the audience that the audience learns something and nothing to do with ibm representative nothing to do with the product so no i'm not doing this this role this role today take it out it's screaming or that we usually do by doing these things yeah and that's uh that's me that's me good thank you very much then let's start with the first block of the interview let's talk about the fundamentals of quantum computing yeah so would you like to clarify maybe some basic concepts or introducing what compu quantum computing is in simple but accurate words okay so quantum computing and you said quantum computing let's start with computing what's what do we mean by computing well computing is is calculating yeah it's calculating something calculating using some methods and observing some rules and of course quantum computing is calculating yes the same thing calculating but following the rules of huh quantum mechanics and uh observing what and following uh well you know solving the the the the quantum algorithms which are the the things that we have to uh apply in it to to reach this thing so these these three things so quantum computing is calculating with quantum mechanics following a quantum algorithm so that's that's it and by the way of these three things are completely different to the way that we need to what we are used to to calculate you know when we put when we sum something or we subtract something or we multiply two numbers we follow different rules we follow a different method nothing absolutely nothing to do with that no yeah that's that's quantum computing calculating and why do we need quantum computing because we already have super computers that can calculate very fast why do we need a different way to calculate yes because there is um so you are absolutely right so today we have 12 normal laptops that do uh great things like you know they so they are indeed calculating right now the brightness the brightness of each pixel and they are doing really well so we don't need quantum computers for that and we have super computing uh super computers now classical super computers that are able i don't know to do calculations like like crazy but but there are business problems and there are scientific problems that even with these fantastic machines cannot be solved and a portion of of that um they can well they can be addressed so those problems carb addresses by following the rules of quantum mechanics which by the way were invented perhaps for other things but it happens to be that the mathematical machinery that was invented for other things it applies perfectly for these kinds of a problem not all of them but for a portion of them it results to be that the the quantum mechanics the quantum computing methods are very very very efficient and that's why we need the quantum computing that for solving these portions of problems that we cannot solve today with with classical computers well but i mean we already have different methods for calculating a different kind of computers like for example we have graphic cards that are accelerating the calculations we have special professors we have application specific integrated circuits like for solving the bitcoin problem for security and for similar things so why can't we solve the problems that quantum computing is solving with this kind of existing technologies yes so uh the the current computers can solve many many many of these very complicated problems up to a threshold yes if we go up to this threshold um no they cannot because the amount of effort the amount of resources the amount of complexity exceeds the well the capacities of the computers that we have today and you know someone said net that for a certain problems now you will need something like the age of the universe not for for for solving that and this is a matter of thresholds you know after this threshold our computers kind of cannot do that okay and what is making the calculation from quantity competence differently from the existing super computers ah okay so um so what what do we say so for for calculating something uh we need something like three things so uh if we calculate we need a way to represent numbers no or more general to represent the information um we need a method and we need a set of rules no yeah and of course we need hopefully a specialized hardware that can do we can use these rules and observe these methods um so natively and represent all these informations natively in the in the way that the quantum mechanics are doing but you know i'm i'm telling you some complicated things let's uh try to explain it with different things no do you know what what it is yeah yes i know what this is it is this is a chinese one right yes it's a chinese this is a chinese yeah yeah yeah and you know this this thing uh is a calculator it's a kind of computer because it uses these three components that i told you you know so first of all it has a it has a way of representing the information so representing numbers not so representing things by moving these tokens up and down so this is the zero that's just the one two three four so by doing that we are representing numbers no with these tokens with the so the positions the positions of these tokens is the way of representing numbers they're representing the information so then we have a algorithm so a method of calculating we say so if you want to sell if you want to sum two numbers what you have to do is so pers put the first number here and then start moving that now with the rules of the abacus and then you calculate something and you also have rules things that you cannot break so the rules are you are only allowed to move things up and down yeah and you cannot take one of those things apart and some no this these are rules there are things that you can't do observe them this is what i mean with representing the information following a meta method and observing rules no so this is another course and all our computers are doing calculations very very very similarly so they don't they don't have tokens but they have bits bits and bytes and the bits can have two states two positions up down zero and one yeah that's it so that was what we say that our computers calculate like a navajos but i told you that we are doing things very differently yes it is a basketball this is a basketball well this is the quantum computers don't don't use basketballs they use one thing called qubits they use qubits to represent the information and what's the way of representing information so with a token like that so if i put this token here it's just a zero if i put this talk in here this is the one but i can move this token everywhere in the surface of the of of the sphere of of this ball so if you remember the abacus has two positions up and down how many positions has this thing well theoretically an infinite number of positions an infinite number of rotations yeah because this is the method that we use to calculate rotating this token yes rotating this token is the way of calculating and you will ask me how do do we do that well there are books that big that explain how to calculate doing that and uh the things that we have to do is to observe the rules of quantum mechanics and some of them are great yeah but some of them are very annoying yeah and what do you mean by annoying so when a quantum computer starts to calculate it happens something like this we are shaking the qubits yeah and we are moving this token inside of this basketball inside of the cubits we are shaking that so shaking is performing and quantum algorithm if i do that i'm doing i don't know which algorithms i'm doing this way i'm performing another algorithm and i don't see that and at the end and at the end yeah do you think that i see the position of the token yeah no i don't see that the only thing when at the end of the algorithm i see either this or this this is a zero and this is a one why because the rules of the quantum mechanics prohibits me to see the exact position by by calculating and by measuring the rules of quantum mechanics force me to see either the thing here or the thing here representing a zero over one which means that sometimes these wonderful rules of the quantum mechanics makes our life uh more complicated no because you know i can move this thing everywhere but in the end i also have either a zero or a one which is makes our life more complicated but you know uh there are many many more intelligent people that have developed algorithms so ways of shaking this so that we can perform much better than other other computings so this is what i mean uh that we are this is quite different compared to this completely different traditional super computers the basketball with the sphere is quantum computing exactly so a quantum computer is a specialized hardware which has many things like that not so many so hopefully many one day so today we are something like in the well as we are recording this video i think 127 or 100 on something is the the maximum number of qubits at least with uh with the well we did with universal uh technology uh but one day now we will have many of them so perhaps much more than that many more than that thank you very much now i think i understand or i could be able to explain also with these words what the difference is thank you for for the explanation then let's move to the second block of the interview the application areas yeah so we say that contributing is important because it's of problems that we cannot solve today with supercomputers what are these problems that we need to solve so uh i think they are well there are many problems there are many problems but perhaps one of them which is more the most famous one so this kind of problems that exceed the age of the universe and so with which by the way it was not my quote i think is the quote of uh david deutsch what was a nobel prize laureate who said that for the first time well at least his claim in the in the media that is he said for the first time and i think he was referring to the breaking the codes of the encryption that we are using so uh i think i think i hope that the conversation that we are doing right now is encrypted uh and uh yes so if we are using the rsa encryption and we are using perhaps a a very small kit or a very big key there is a difference because you know if we use a small key it's very easy to break this encryption code and if there's a very big key in uh well you know this is very difficult and very difficult means that if the key that we are using for encrypting our communication is something like 4k so 4096 bits we need indeed more than the age of the universe for doing that um a quantum computing a quantum computer one day will be able to reduce this amount of time dramatically but you know who knows if if a couple of minutes a couple of hours now but in in no case the age of the universe so enough in a way that will be possible to to break the code so this is already uh proven so it's not one thing that everybody says no this is one thing this is mathematically proven that one quantum computer one day will be will be uh yes will be we will break we'll break the encryption algorithms that we have today the good news of course is that we are working today in other uh kind of algorithms which are which are being standardized at the the time of talking to between um uh that no quantum computer we will be able to break let's hope of that so security is perhaps the first application area when we can use the quantum computing but if you think about the chemistry for example well gimmick's chemistry of life sciences in in general so there are many things like the molecule simulations that uh are sweet spots for for quantum computing one day not today but one day because you know today let's think about something like coffee yeah so i i don't know if you take a look at the of the molecule of coffee it's a very small molecule so to simulate that with a classical computer we will need something like i don't know perhaps 10 of the atoms of the earth which is a lot which is a lot with a quantum computer we would need something like 160 things like that which is very good which is really good and it gives you an idea of the potential of quantum computing for simulating molecules and and that but you know the the coffin molecule is very small not think about the the proteins or you know other other molecules that are huge one day we will have a quantum computer of uh thousands tens of thousands millions of of or something like that and we will be able to to solve this uh this kind of problems um which is the second application area so the life sciences and the third um you know artificial intelligence artificial intelligence machine learning is also a switchboard now for uh for quantum computing why not well among other things now for the ways of uh training so the the the ability of quantum computers of providing a set of training which is very wide in and well it's it's a a real sweet spot uh sweet spot for uh for for quantum computing and finally finally finally when it comes to my mind is oh yes for the uh for the uh for the financial services in industry you know there are many many banks there are insurance companies we are calculating risk and optimizing investments and portfolios using uh using quite a quantum computer well correction uh they have investigated they have done some research now to find out that quantum computers can also be applied for that it's not that they are running today at least to my knowledge i'm not doing that but they also they actually proven they have proven the the enormous potential of a quantum computer for one for for these areas yeah and are there also use cases for industrial companies industrial company yes so for example manufacturing for example for but you know sometimes you have to um to to do something like you know semiconductors so to manufacturing a semiconductors is a very very very complicated thing so the number of processes the number of things that you have to do though is is crazy and for optimizing this for finding the the optimal path for manufacturing that is yes the quantum computers are really good or also for finding routes no yeah to get you know to distribute things in a complicated supply chain is also one thing manufacturing is an industry as a sweet spot of this industry okay good thank you very much so now we have learned about the different use cases that we have for quantum computing so let's move to the block number three the state of the art of quantum computing so you have just said that quantum computing can be used for live science industrial companies banking sector as well we said ai machine learning and security are there already many companies using quantum computing to enhance their businesses for using developer positions technologies or is this something that is yet to come yes yes so yes no no so using quantum computing means today in the state of the art that the most of the projects if not all of them i i'm aware of it's not that a company runs a pro performs a project or do something and at the end of this project there is a system running a quantum computer application no this is or at least no to my knowledge so um what companies are doing today many of them many big companies many startups many institutions what they have is dedicated people uh doing research doing research in quantum computing and research means that that they get this uh shake things and they invent or they create a wake of shaking cubits that one day will be profitable when we have a bigger quantum computer a better hardware or alberta something like that so the result of a quantum computing project most of the quantum computing projects if not all is either you know something like a research paper which has been published in a prestigious magazine scientific magazine or a internal report which says yes quantum computing is great for our company unfortunately we don't have the hardware to today but you know in a few years we will have this hardware place or or perhaps the result is that one one team inside of this company has been educated and can make their minds make their own mind and to take decisions about one technology that is going to be with us for the for the next years so yes and no there are companies working on that but not something like a turnkey application that you do in three months and you deployed it and it starts running no that's that's that's not the thing that i that's that's that's not the project i know i'm aware of that okay so that means that quantum computing is not yet a major technology again yes and no yes and no so they are they are not mature for those people expecting hey i developed something or run a proof of concept in three months and after three months there is a turnkey application during that no this is not mature for that but they are totally mature for what i call the creators of innovation so not consumers of innovation you know because you know consumers of innovation are people that you know who get a technology run a proof of concept and say oh yes this technology for me or not no so the most of projects i'm aware of they are based perhaps in some study perhaps in some paper perhaps in some algorithm but the but the people create innovation which means that that they have to work with the shake machine to invent to invent something something that which perhaps does not exist of or if it exists it has been substantially changed or considerably enhanced in order that it makes it profitable for something so for creators of innovation yes they are totally mature no yeah we can start to today and how long will it take until we see a more mainstream usage or use of quantum computing how long how long you know everybody has what does it take to to make it happen oh oh oh yes um so we need essentially three or four things so first of all we need a better hardware now these things today they are great um well that they have a very very big room for improvement let's say we need to be able uh to put many of these things like this yeah we need to put many of these things working together no and uh of course the good news is that although today well we can put something like 100 or 127 or something like like like that the good news is that we are improving improving this technology dramatically every day so that every year constantly we are well we are almost exponentially improving the number of qubits that we can put in our hardware so we need better better hard work second we need better uh algorithms so um software yeah things that can make use of these capabilities and today there are many of them but again there are also many roof many big room for improvement for that and so we need better more efficient uh algorithms and yeah and perhaps more more simple uh ways of of using quantum computing and the third one of course people people who are dedicated so uh it's not so easy but it's not so difficult now you know it's not that you need to have a phd on physics or of course you will have a big advantage if you do if you are a doctor in physics no of course not but you know i am an engineer no i'm not a doctor of physics or mathematics and uh well i must say that it was never so easy and so cool to learn at least the fundamentals or at least starting with with quantum computing okay well then i mean i think with this we can move to the fourth and last block of the interview that are the recommendations jordy started elaborating a little bit about it on what profiles could be feasible or what profiles could be relevant for working in quantum computing if they have their interest so yeah so um i think so as i said so if you are someone who has a background on mathematics physics engineering so one you have an advantage but everyone who is an enthusiast of programming on technology and so on uh they can start today you know because there are platforms well let me call them platforms so there is one that i know pretty well which is called kiskit and kiskit well it's it's not a platform no it's a way uh it's um it's a community it's a it's a community of people contributing for educating uh the market let's say and contributing for creating a set of libraries for programming quantum quantum computers and i don't know if it is the best how compares to others but because it's the only one i know but i can tell you it is pretty cool so it's a pretty cool platform it's a pretty cool way to start enjoying enjoying doing this really really yeah and you don't know the quant you don't need a quantum computer for that you can install this thing on your laptop yeah even if you have a raspberry pi even you can install this kisket on a raspberry pi and start enjoying and start moving cubits and rotating tokens and and all this thing uh so you can start from the beginning but also to learn this uh optimizing algorithms for routing or yes so this is still there so there's content for everyone for the basic and for the basic so never it was so easy to uh to start on that so this is that will be my my first recommendation so start learning because you know the quantum computers are so i've if they were born a few years ago now and they will stay with us for the rest of our lives so it's it's better that we start to learn what it means equate quantum computing as individuals and also as a company so if you are a company that perhaps you are a little bit skeptical or you don't know where it is just pick one consultant or of your confidence uh or pick one student of the university uh and try to elaborate if quantum computing is good or not on when and how much will cost for for your company my recommendation my personal recommendation is that you start doing moderate investment but in my opinion there is no options to not to move no so do nothing with quantum computing is for me for me not an option small things um i think that's that will be the the best recommendation and if you find out that indeed yeah you want to be recognized in the market as a creator of innovation that's your opportunity that's your opportunity to demonstrate the rest of the market of what your employees are capable of are capable for for doing so if a company says my employees my department has published uh this uh paper in science or in nature or proceedings or i don't know what it gives you a kind of branding that can be very very very profitable for you no so i recommend to start the road map of quantum com computing ask for help or do it by yourself because you know it's what's never so easy to learn quantum computing and i i could assume also if someone has interest in learning more about quantum computing or they need some support for deciding you're there for helping them no doubt about that so i work for ibm so i'm not today as a representative of ibm but have no doubt about that that my company and other companies are more than happy to help on this on this area yeah sure good so then i mean i think with this we we are finishing the interview today thank you very much angel for this fantastic interview on quantum computing i have learned a lot now finally i i understand what is new about quantum computing in comparison to the traditional computers i hope as well that the audience enjoyed this this interview and looking forward to more great conversations with you uncle it has been a pleasure sure it was my pleasure now and uh yeah so thank you very much and hopefully we see we will be here again somewhere bye [Music]

2022-02-23 09:35

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