What you should know about the 2nd Quantum Revolution
It’s OK if your mind drifts to science fiction upon hearing the words “quantum mechanics.” For years, creators have rooted devices such as parallel universes, time travel, teleportation and more in that branch of physics dealing with subatomic particles.
It’s hard to fault them. The complexities and oddities of that beyond-tiny world are inversely immense, making for limitless – and wondrous – storytelling possibilities.
It so happens that the same applies to the real world. If those stories were projections of the future, that future has arrived earlier than expected, for all manner of industries, in the form of quantum computing.
“Everybody thinks, ‘This is 20 years down the road,’” says AJ Sikora, chief learning officer at Qubo Consulting. “Well, we thought ChatGPT was going to be five years down the road.”
To help understand how fiction has turned to fact, Sikora and Qubo CEO and quantum physicist Dr. Katanya Kuntz are collaborating with NAIT to offer “Introduction to the 2nd Quantum Revolution for Professionals,” Canada’s first certificate of its kind.
It’s aimed at executives and engineers in fields ranging from banking to manufacturing to supply chain management to anywhere that classical computers may fall short in solving extremely complicated problems that require something more, well, wondrous. We talked to Kuntz and Sikora about what the technology means to decision-makers today.
What makes computing “quantum”?
Don’t worry: Kuntz and Sikora stress that theirs is not a technical course focused on quantum mechanics (that is, on the very model developed by scientists during the first quantum revolution).
But what makes quantum tech so powerful, and therefore so useful?
In classical computing, says Sikora, a bit – the smallest building block of all digital information – can have a value of either zero or one.
“It can't be anything in between.”
But a qubit, the quantum version of a bit, can exist as a combination of zero and one, empowering it with mind-boggling multitasking capability, a boon to running complex computations.
“The main point,” says Kuntz, “is that you're able to do calculations that traditional computers cannot.”
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Myriad applications
To keep their subject practical and accessible, Kuntz and Sikora focus on case studies, with an emphasis on how quantum computing and other quantum technologies can improve efficiencies – the essence of the second revolution.
Kuntz offers drug design as an example. Drug interactions and an individual’s response to a medication are difficult to model and can limit a drug’s success. Those variables can collude in an astronomical number of ways that require the consideration of designers. The same can apply to optimizing aircraft features, Kuntz adds, or electrical grids, or financial portfolios.
Arriving at a solution could occupy a conventional computer for literally millions of years.
In some cases, arriving at solutions could occupy a conventional computer for literally millions of years.
In looking at these real-world implications, the course material becomes universal, suggests Sikora. “It might not be specific to your industry but it's specific as to what anybody in any industry should know. We use different industries to convey the applications and importance.”
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By industry, for industry
The development of the courses, which are delivered online starting later this month, is in large part the result of conversations with industry members.
For the past several years, Sikora and Kuntz have been listening to colleagues and paying attention at conferences.
“There's this knowledge gap,” says Kuntz. “There's the users and the academics – and there's nobody in between, translating. That's what these courses are trying to do.”
The quantum reality
You can't pick up a quantum computer at your local tech shop but that’s not to say the revolution isn’t well underway.
Companies exist that will run computations, and others are working on hardware and software. Worldwide, Sikora points out, investment is accelerating. Collectively, countries are putting more than US$40 billion into research and innovation; by 2040, analysts expect the market for quantum tech to reach more than $100 billion.
That growth is the bright side of the story. The darker one is the potential for encryption cracking, Sikora adds. “It's expected that [bad] actors are stealing currently encrypted information and storing it until they have a quantum system to break that encryption.”
By 2040, analysts expect the market for quantum tech to reach more than $100 billion.
As was the case for generative AI, capabilities aren’t likely far off for quantum computing, be it for good or otherwise. Already, the industry has made great strides with systems that use just a few hundred qubits (while a classical computer operates with memory systems measured on the giga-scale). As years pass and the qubits pile up, “What would we be capable of?” Sikora asks.
“As a business leader, wouldn’t you want to know about and be prepared for that?”