[00:00] Quantum computing is one of the most exciting&nbsp; new technologies on the radar. And you all know&nbsp;&nbsp; that I've been following the progress&nbsp; closely for years. In the past months,&nbsp;&nbsp; weird things have been happening. And when&nbsp; I say weird, I don't mean quantum weird,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:15] where a particle goes through two slits at&nbsp; once. I mean business weird, where a company&nbsp;&nbsp; goes through two road maps at once. Let's have&nbsp; a look. But first, what's a quantum computer?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:27] Quantum computers perform mathematical operations&nbsp; with logical units that have quantum properties.&nbsp;&nbsp; The so-called quantum bits or qubits for short.&nbsp; I sometimes hear people say this gives quantum&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:40] computers special power because the number of&nbsp; qubits grows exponentially. If you have a qubit&nbsp;&nbsp; with two states 0 and 1, then you can combine it&nbsp; with a second qubit to a product state. Then you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:53] have 0 0 ,1 1, 0 1, and 0 1. that makes four. Take&nbsp; a third and you have eight. For n qubits, you have&nbsp;&nbsp; 2 to the n. It indeed grows exponentially.&nbsp; Yes, but actually that's the case already&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:06] for standard bits. The quantum advantage does not&nbsp; just come from combining the qubits, but from the&nbsp;&nbsp; possibility to entangle them. This means not only&nbsp; do you have 0 0, 1 1, 0 1, and 0 1, you can also&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20] take sums of those with arbitrary prefactors. say&nbsp; 0 1 + 1 0 with weights to tune. Now you see these&nbsp;&nbsp; states don't exist in a standard computer. So you&nbsp; have many many more states you can calculate with&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:36] and this is basically why quantum computers can&nbsp; perform certain calculations much faster. Alas&nbsp;&nbsp; this advantage only becomes relevant for a large&nbsp; enough number of qubits somewhere in the range of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:50] some 100,000 to a million. One of the diagnostics&nbsp; I like to look at is IBM's road map to quantum&nbsp;&nbsp; computing. If you look at their road map from a&nbsp; few years ago, they were planning that by 2025,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:02] they'd have more than 4,000 qubits and by 2026,&nbsp; they'd be scaling to a 10,000 and up. If you look&nbsp;&nbsp; at their current road map, these qubit numbers&nbsp; have just disappeared. Clearly, something didn't&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:15] quite go according to plan. Instead, IBM and&nbsp; others have been quietly shifting goals. First,&nbsp;&nbsp; they claimed that noisy quantum computers could&nbsp; have practical uses already. Unfortunately,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:28] these uses were nowhere to be found. Now, they use&nbsp; hybrid approaches that combine both conventional&nbsp;&nbsp; and quantum computers. The advantage of those is&nbsp; that you can't tell what the quantum part was good&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:41] for. IBM has for example recently announced they&nbsp; used quantum centric supercomputing to simulate&nbsp;&nbsp; a big protein complex. Quantum centric is new&nbsp; speak for hybrid approaches. In this case most of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:56] the calculation was actually done by a classical&nbsp; supercomput and they say in the paper themselves&nbsp;&nbsp; that the results of the purely conventional and&nbsp; partly quantum computation are comparable. Don't&nbsp;&nbsp; get me wrong, this is all very interesting and&nbsp; I think it's cool they're doing this and so on,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:12] but this is still far off any practical use.&nbsp; When it comes to practical uses, all we have&nbsp;&nbsp; are increasingly bizarre claims like that AI and&nbsp; quantum computing could deliver on the promise of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:24] personalized medicine or that quantum computers&nbsp; could boost AI. When in doubt, sprinkle AI on it.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's like the parsley of business. This video&nbsp; was made possible by Free Cash. Free Cash is a&nbsp;&nbsp;
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[04:26] deter the governments of the world from pouring&nbsp; money into it. I already reported recently that&nbsp;&nbsp; China has made quantum computing part of their&nbsp; new 5-year plan. Now, rather predictably, the US&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:38] government has ramped up their investments into&nbsp; quantum computing as well. Just last week, they&nbsp;&nbsp; put a total of $2 billion into quantum computing,&nbsp; which I remind you is the technology that so&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:51] far has zero practical use. Global Foundaries&nbsp; promptly launched Quantum Technology Solutions,&nbsp;&nbsp; a new quantum business for the quantum industry&nbsp; and its pipeline of quantum innovators. IBM says&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:06] they're building a quantum foundry for quantum&nbsp; wafers to power America's quantum leadership,&nbsp;&nbsp; quantum innovation, and quantum ecosystem.&nbsp; Wow, so much quantum. Who' not be impressed?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:18] What the heck is a quantum wafer, you ask? Yes,&nbsp; good question. IBM and Google and Amazon use&nbsp;&nbsp; superconducting circuits as qubits. One of their&nbsp; main benefits is that you can print them using&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:31] standard chip production methods on the standard&nbsp; silicon wafers. They are not standard microchips.&nbsp;&nbsp; You need to print the wires with materials that&nbsp; become superconducting at low temperatures. But&nbsp;&nbsp; the production of the chips has never been the&nbsp; main problem. The problem is to use the chips in&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:49] combination and find the use for them. The one&nbsp; application for large enough quantum computers&nbsp;&nbsp; that no one really doubts is that they could&nbsp; break some old encryption protocols. But this is&nbsp;&nbsp; not exactly a use case for the average person. And&nbsp; once the old protocols have been decrypted, that's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:07] that. The other use cases that you often hear,&nbsp; quantum chemistry, material science, logistics,&nbsp;&nbsp; and finance have all eroded one after the other.&nbsp; Either because AI is doing things that quantum&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:19] computing was supposed to solve, or because no&nbsp; one could actually honestly find something useful&nbsp;&nbsp; to do with them, even theoretically. To me, all&nbsp; these billions being thrown at quantum computing&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:33] looks that [&nbsp;__&nbsp;] crazy given the low expected&nbsp; return on investment. This is particularly obvious&nbsp;&nbsp; if you compare it to nuclear fusion, which has a&nbsp; fraction of the funding but dramatically clearer&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:45] return on investment. Yes, I'm now defending&nbsp; nuclear fusion as the practical option. This&nbsp;&nbsp; is how weird this has become. Don't forget to&nbsp; check out free cash using my link or scanning&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:57] the QR code and turn your spare time into real&nbsp; money. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.