The TLDR:
There’s been a staggering increase in the coverage of quantum computing and its forthcoming ability to make life better for all. While many question its effectiveness and official debut, the general consensus is that quantum computing will have the power to do computational work at unbelievably higher rates than modern computers and can help make the world a better place by doing extremely complex modeling, data training, and general computation at an extraordinary rate.
Setting the Basics: What is Quantum Computing?
The best way to describe quantum computing is through an analogy.
First, let’s establish how today’s computers function: Visualize a coin. Each coin has two sides–a head side and a tail side. When you “flip a coin,” it goes up in the air, comes down, and lands on one of its faces. Upon landing, the coin has a total of two outcomes: a head or a tail.
Now, let’s consider how a quantum computer can function: Visualize a coin. Each coin has two sides–a head side and a tail side. When you “flip the coin,” it goes up in the air. As it’s in the air, the coin can do certain interesting tricks, and you can’t exactly determine the outcome of the coin flip unless you carefully examine the coin.
To better illustrate this analogy, let’s consider a modern computer and a quantum computer trying to solve a large maze.
In today’s modern computing, the computer starts at the beginning of the maze, tries one route, and determines if the correct maze route has been located. If the route is incorrect, the computer starts at the beginning of the maze and tries a new route. This process repeats until the correct path is identified.
In quantum computing, the computer tests all of the maze routes at the same time, allowing for the route to be identified in a much shorter duration.
The Good of Quantum Computing
Returning to the analogy of the maze, the power and speed of quantum computing provide the most promising benefits to society.
AI: Current computers–even with the best GPUs–take days, weeks, or even months to train artificial intelligence models. With a quantum computer, these training tasks could be minimized to minutes.
Healthcare: Some research suggests that quantum computers will have the capability to better understand molecules and their specific interactions, allowing chemists, doctors, and pharmacists to create more effective medications and build stronger understandings of how cells function.
Weather and Climate: Some meteorologists anticipate that quantum computing will be able to use large models and historical data to more accurately predict weather, climate, and hurricane trajectories.
The Bad of Quantum Computing
While the “good” aspects of quantum computing provide a positive outlook for society, the power of quantum computing could be catastrophic if it were to become accessible to those with malicious intentions.
One of the greatest fears of scientists is the quantum computer’s talent for cryptography. With the strong and fast computing ability of a quantum computer, many worry that modern encryption techniques which keep online information like credit cards, bank details, and medical records secure and unreadable may become easily decrypted and read by malicious actors.
So… when is this thing coming out?
Quantum computing has been studied and developed since the 1970s, but it has only been in recent years that quantum computing has peaked mainstream headlines.
Quantum computing has been studied heavily in recent years, especially at major tech organizations such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Cool (and Scary) Things That Have Been Done with Quantum Computing
2022: Japan announced they’ve developed a portable quantum computer.
2023: Microsoft announced they’re working on a quantum computer with an anticipated delivery in 2033. This computer will be able to complete at least 1 million operations per second.
2024: Google announced their quantum computing chip, Willow. Willow takes 15 minutes to complete a task that would take today’s best supercomputers around 10 septillion years to complete.
Should We Be Worried?
While some have placed worry on the power and influence of quantum computing, many scientists and leaders in the technology field agree that quantum computing will not pose a serious danger for some time. Major worries–such as decrypting sensitive information–are not warranted, as only major organizations, governments, and universities have access to quantum computers.
A Fun Thing You Can Do
Take a look at Google’s work in quantum computing!
