Strange Things Are Happening in Quantum Computing

[00:00] Quantum computing is one of the most exciting  new technologies on the radar. And you all know   that I've been following the progress  closely for years. In the past months,   weird things have been happening. And when  I say weird, I don't mean quantum weird,  

[00:15] where a particle goes through two slits at  once. I mean business weird, where a company   goes through two road maps at once. Let's have  a look. But first, what's a quantum computer?  

[00:27] Quantum computers perform mathematical operations  with logical units that have quantum properties.   The so-called quantum bits or qubits for short.  I sometimes hear people say this gives quantum  

[00:40] computers special power because the number of  qubits grows exponentially. If you have a qubit   with two states 0 and 1, then you can combine it  with a second qubit to a product state. Then you  

[00:53] have 0 0 ,1 1, 0 1, and 0 1. that makes four. Take  a third and you have eight. For n qubits, you have   2 to the n. It indeed grows exponentially.  Yes, but actually that's the case already  

[01:06] for standard bits. The quantum advantage does not  just come from combining the qubits, but from the   possibility to entangle them. This means not only  do you have 0 0, 1 1, 0 1, and 0 1, you can also  

[01:20] take sums of those with arbitrary prefactors. say  0 1 + 1 0 with weights to tune. Now you see these   states don't exist in a standard computer. So you  have many many more states you can calculate with  

[01:36] and this is basically why quantum computers can  perform certain calculations much faster. Alas   this advantage only becomes relevant for a large  enough number of qubits somewhere in the range of  

[01:50] some 100,000 to a million. One of the diagnostics  I like to look at is IBM's road map to quantum   computing. If you look at their road map from a  few years ago, they were planning that by 2025,  

[02:02] they'd have more than 4,000 qubits and by 2026,  they'd be scaling to a 10,000 and up. If you look   at their current road map, these qubit numbers  have just disappeared. Clearly, something didn't  

[02:15] quite go according to plan. Instead, IBM and  others have been quietly shifting goals. First,   they claimed that noisy quantum computers could  have practical uses already. Unfortunately,  

[02:28] these uses were nowhere to be found. Now, they use  hybrid approaches that combine both conventional   and quantum computers. The advantage of those is  that you can't tell what the quantum part was good  

[02:41] for. IBM has for example recently announced they  used quantum centric supercomputing to simulate   a big protein complex. Quantum centric is new  speak for hybrid approaches. In this case most of  

[02:56] the calculation was actually done by a classical  supercomput and they say in the paper themselves   that the results of the purely conventional and  partly quantum computation are comparable. Don't   get me wrong, this is all very interesting and  I think it's cool they're doing this and so on,  

[03:12] but this is still far off any practical use.  When it comes to practical uses, all we have   are increasingly bizarre claims like that AI and  quantum computing could deliver on the promise of  

[03:24] personalized medicine or that quantum computers  could boost AI. When in doubt, sprinkle AI on it.   It's like the parsley of business. This video  was made possible by Free Cash. Free Cash is a  

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[04:14] to turn that time into something valuable. Try it  out yourself by using my link or scanning the QR   code. Offers and bonuses may vary by country.  And now back to the science news. That doesn't  

[04:26] deter the governments of the world from pouring  money into it. I already reported recently that   China has made quantum computing part of their  new 5-year plan. Now, rather predictably, the US  

[04:38] government has ramped up their investments into  quantum computing as well. Just last week, they   put a total of $2 billion into quantum computing,  which I remind you is the technology that so  

[04:51] far has zero practical use. Global Foundaries  promptly launched Quantum Technology Solutions,   a new quantum business for the quantum industry  and its pipeline of quantum innovators. IBM says  

[05:06] they're building a quantum foundry for quantum  wafers to power America's quantum leadership,   quantum innovation, and quantum ecosystem.  Wow, so much quantum. Who' not be impressed?  

[05:18] What the heck is a quantum wafer, you ask? Yes,  good question. IBM and Google and Amazon use   superconducting circuits as qubits. One of their  main benefits is that you can print them using  

[05:31] standard chip production methods on the standard  silicon wafers. They are not standard microchips.   You need to print the wires with materials that  become superconducting at low temperatures. But   the production of the chips has never been the  main problem. The problem is to use the chips in  

[05:49] combination and find the use for them. The one  application for large enough quantum computers   that no one really doubts is that they could  break some old encryption protocols. But this is   not exactly a use case for the average person. And  once the old protocols have been decrypted, that's  

[06:07] that. The other use cases that you often hear,  quantum chemistry, material science, logistics,   and finance have all eroded one after the other.  Either because AI is doing things that quantum  

[06:19] computing was supposed to solve, or because no  one could actually honestly find something useful   to do with them, even theoretically. To me, all  these billions being thrown at quantum computing  

[06:33] looks that [ __ ] crazy given the low expected  return on investment. This is particularly obvious   if you compare it to nuclear fusion, which has a  fraction of the funding but dramatically clearer  

[06:45] return on investment. Yes, I'm now defending  nuclear fusion as the practical option. This   is how weird this has become. Don't forget to  check out free cash using my link or scanning  

[06:57] the QR code and turn your spare time into real  money. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.