AI’s Got Nothing on Quantum: Why You Should Brace Yourself for this Next Tech Boom

The societal implications of Quantum Computing are so mind blowing, it will make the computing revolution of the 20th century look primitive. Quantum computing is the only hope we have for making life 100% sustainable on this earth and will allow us to develop new means of energy production and storage. It will transform all walks of society the same way modern day computing changed our world in the 20th century.

Unpacking Quantum Computing: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Crucial for Our Future

I get this question asked a lot, and so far, I don’t think anyone anywhere has given a good mainstream answer as to the “why” of quantum computing. And it’s not surprising, considering how difficult it is to take something so complex, and to simplify it in such a way that is succinct and understandable.

That is why I’d like to provide my explanation here in this article, and make Quantum Computing a little more mainstream. In order to do so, I will simplify it as much as possible, and aim to be concise, in order to get you to a place where you’ll actually “get” it. My goal is to get you to feel excited and optimistic about the future, so much so that you’ll want to tell at least one other person about quantum computing.

So let’s start with the qubit, the fundamental unit of of a quantum computer.

The Bit and the Qubit

Everyone remembers classical bits from modern day computers. Bits can be represented as either a zero (0) or a one (1). The qubit on the other hand can be a zero (0), a one (1), or a superposition of the two. The illustration above gives you a more concrete idea as to how superposition is represented in a qubit. One way to think of superposition is by using probabilities; there’s a 70% chance that the qubit is a one (1) and 30% chance that it is a zero (0). Therefore, classical bits are Deterministic, and quantum bits are probabalistic. (This will be important to remember later on)

What Exactly Is Superposition?

In quantum physics, tiny, subatomic particles do weird things, like when a particle “knows” you’re observing it. Why? We have no idea, and when physicists first observed this phenomenon they assumed their lab equipment was just faulty. When you’re “observing” a particle, it behaves like a particle, and when you’re not observing it, it acts like a wave. If none of this makes any sense, I highly recommend watching this video before going any further. It does a great job at explaining the particle-wave duality observed in quantum physics. It’s both fascinating and creepy that particles “know” they’re being watched.

Problems So Hard, Even Computers Can’t Solve Them

Now, why does all this superposition stuff matter? Well, it’s a neat hack to solve extremely difficult problems, really fast. As you can see in the figure above, these types of large-scale problems lead to something called combinatorial explosion. One combinatorial explosion example is when your local Amazon truck delivering packages needs to find the most optimal delivery route.

If a truck has three packages on board, it has 6 possible combinations of routes it can take. But if it has 9 packages on board, it has 362,880, or 9! (factorial) possible routes. Scale that number to 60 packages or 60! (factorial), and the number of possible routes is more than the number of particles in the known universe, 10⁸¹, or a number that is 81 digits long!

Computers are primarily brute force machines. That is a direct result of their deterministic unit of measurement, namely a zero (0), or a one (1). They have to test every single combination of each route in order to find the optimal route. But when you’re dealing with 10⁸¹ possible combinations of routes, it becomes impossible for any classical computer to find the optimal route. Even if you had all the computational power in the world, it would still take a literal eternity to find the optimal route.

These problems give logistics companies nightmares, and force them to make “best guesses.” Finding THE optimal route in real-time is the holy grail of logistics and solving this problem will save countless dollars, hours and fuel, and decrease waste and carbon output.

Another example of combinatorial explosion is molecule simulation. Electrons and atoms interact with each other constantly and simultaneously, and as their numbers grow, simulating them on classical computers becomes impossible. The molecules simulated today are rather small, and pale in comparison to understanding certain things like protein folding or catalysis. If quantum computers could simulate molecules, the same way we simulate classical physics in video games, we could run clinical drug trials virtually in mere days as opposed to countless years. We could understand how plants capture energy far better than our solar cells and create batteries that are as efficient as nature itself.

To put it plainly, because qubits have this probabilistic feature called superposition, we can design algorithms that look for all possible solutions to a problem at the same time. We will no longer be limited to the deterministic limitations our classical computers impose on us to brute force their way to solving a problem. This will allow us to solve problems that normal computers today are simply incapable of solving, unlocking a new world of exciting possibilities.

The Quantum Revolution: Unlocking Sustainability and Unmatched Computing Power

Hopefully now you understand why the societal implications of Quantum Computing are so massive. Something of an inconvenient paradox for humanity is that human well-being and energy consumption per capita are highly correlated. The more energy we burn, the better off we are. That means we need to develop clever ways of producing and storing energy. If we have a better fundamental understanding of how nature and quantum mechanics do this, we’ll be able to live in a world with more energy consumption at 100% sustainability.

Quantum Computing has gone parabolic in the last few months, with publicly traded companies such as Rigetti Computing and IonQ growing over 500% over the last 6 months. I believe we still have so much more room to grow, as Quantum Computing aims to solve many problems that industries like Artificial Intelligence are facing, with higher energy and hardware costs. Quantum Computers will solve many of these bottlenecks enabling orders of magnitude more efficient computing, while simultaneously providing more powerful computing platforms compared to Classical Computing.

The Quantum Revolution is finally here, so strap yourselves in and enjoy the ride!

Dominik Andrzejczuk

Polish American Venture Capitalist