Welcome to Impact Quantum, the podcast where we strip away the
Speaker:hype and break down the real world impact of quantum
Speaker:computing. No hand wavy mysticism, just data
Speaker:driven insights, practical applications, and the
Speaker:occasional existential crisis about the nature of reality.
Speaker:Whether you're a quantum enthusiast, a weary tech exec trying to
Speaker:make sense of the buzzwords, or just someone who enjoys the
Speaker:idea of computing so powerful it makes classical bits weep, this
Speaker:is your home. So grab your superposition
Speaker:snacks and let's dive into the quantum realm where
Speaker:uncertainty is not a bug, it's a feature. Impact Quantum
Speaker:making sense of the quantum revolution, one qubit at a time.
Speaker:Now here is ten seconds of dubstep.
Speaker:Alright. And those ten seconds of dubstep can only mean one
Speaker:thing, another Impact Quantum episode. But not just
Speaker:another Impact Quantum episode. We are back.
Speaker:We're relaunching the show with some changes.
Speaker:And, one of those changes is now Andy is not joining us on this
Speaker:episode. Andy will be popping in from time to time, but he couldn't make it
Speaker:today. With me is, one of our
Speaker:newer, folks here at Data Driven Media, Candace
Speaker:Kahuli. Hello, Candice. Hi. How are you?
Speaker:I'm good. I'm good. And this was really
Speaker:you know, bringing this back was really kind of a,
Speaker:a couple of months in the works, I would say. Because we were we
Speaker:were talking about this, and Candace is a marketing extraordinaire, and she's,
Speaker:joined us at Data Driven Media to kind of, you know, plot,
Speaker:like, where do we take this from now? Right? Because the the main
Speaker:podcast data driven, is pushing
Speaker:eight years now, of existence.
Speaker:Season eight will go into production sometime at the next
Speaker:couple of months. Impact Quantum has had two seasons,
Speaker:and we took a bit of a hiatus for a number of reasons.
Speaker:And if you watch if you listen to the main podcast, you're you're aware of
Speaker:some of those reasons. One is, I moved.
Speaker:Then moving with children is very different experience than moving without children.
Speaker:First time I've done it, and then don't recommend it to anyone,
Speaker:honestly. You're laughing because, Candace is laughing because,
Speaker:she's moved internationally with children, but that's, we'll get into that in a minute.
Speaker:And, we have added to the family since then. We've
Speaker:adopted, one of my wife's cousins
Speaker:and, you know, having a
Speaker:toddler and the terrible twos is a different experience now that I'm eight years
Speaker:older. It's a bit different than the last
Speaker:time. But also I think one of this was
Speaker:Candace had me going through some of our, our
Speaker:data sets on on traffic. And I noticed a
Speaker:rather unusual, pattern, and that pattern
Speaker:was that there was an uptick in
Speaker:interest in quantum computing, both in
Speaker:videos I posted on YouTube, on posts that I made on
Speaker:franksworld.com, and on the downloads for the
Speaker:podcast. So without further ado,
Speaker:let me introduce let me have Candice introduce herself.
Speaker:Hi. So I'm Candice Gilhooly. My background is in
Speaker:marketing, tech sales, community
Speaker:development, and I like to really
Speaker:ride the line between being technically
Speaker:literate and being a marketer. I'm always
Speaker:interested in new technology. I was basically
Speaker:born from technology with my father being an IBM,
Speaker:quantum physicist and inventor for nearly thirty
Speaker:years. So I've been surrounded by technology my whole
Speaker:life and I'm obsessed. And I'm
Speaker:not though the typical person who comes to
Speaker:technology. I'm not a coder. So I try to understand
Speaker:it from the outside in so that I can see how I
Speaker:can use that technology to my benefit while
Speaker:not necessarily being the one that's, you know, creating the algorithms
Speaker:and writing the code. I mean, that's
Speaker:fair. I mean and it takes a village too. Right? Like, not everybody
Speaker:is needed to code per se. Even my own career journey, I started
Speaker:as a coder. And, you know, now I do,
Speaker:you know, I do lead kind of proofs of concept and things like that and
Speaker:and and things like that. But I am also now more in the what they
Speaker:call the technical marketing role. And it's kind of
Speaker:like, you know, how do we take the marketing material we get from
Speaker:marketing and convert it from something more than just architecture? Whether those are
Speaker:demos, whether it's kind of, you know, developer advocacy or evangelism,
Speaker:depending on how you wanna refer to that. And it it's
Speaker:cool because I have a tinkerer's mindset. I think I've always
Speaker:have. And, you know,
Speaker:sometimes I think that, I like to joke I have
Speaker:Schrodinger's ADD where it's undiagnosed. My
Speaker:wife is convinced I have it, and but it's undiagnosed,
Speaker:so I can both have it and not have it at the same time.
Speaker:And it gives me a bit of of of an advantage that way.
Speaker:And the uptake in quantum computing, I think,
Speaker:is fascinating. I think a number of things have happened since we last posted the
Speaker:show in approximately October 2022.
Speaker:When I was experimenting with a new format of having Bailey, our
Speaker:virtual host, kind of read out the news and quantum news and things like that.
Speaker:The uptake on those videos were were rather interesting. They were people either love them
Speaker:or they hate them. There was no discernible pattern. I suspect it might
Speaker:have been just search engine optimization magic, would
Speaker:explain kind of why some some of those titles would pick up and some of
Speaker:those didn't. But I also think it's time to kind of, you know, reset
Speaker:the palette as it were. Right? Originally, this was a
Speaker:podcast for engineers. Right? It was basically the idea of if you
Speaker:have data scientists and, software engineers, how do you
Speaker:shepherd them or guide them to this new world of
Speaker:quantum programming. But then getting getting to talk
Speaker:to you, Candace, and, you know, we did collab on a book,
Speaker:sentientmarketingbook.com. There's my
Speaker:official plug. But, the interesting
Speaker:thing is talking to you and this
Speaker:notion of quantum curious. And we also spoke to a number
Speaker:of quantum startup founders, one in particular, what we hope to hear
Speaker:from you'll hear from more in the future.
Speaker:Is the idea that, you know,
Speaker:going into talking to
Speaker:spreading the good word, I guess, of quantum computing. Right? And, you
Speaker:know, quantum physicists, researchers, they already know about this.
Speaker:Right? It's really the the wider
Speaker:audience that I think could benefit from learning what's possible with quantum
Speaker:computers. Obviously, I think we're gonna, you know, stay true to our roots in terms
Speaker:of reaching out to software engineers and developers. But I also
Speaker:think that's a bit shortsighted by sticking to just that group.
Speaker:And Candace, you're the one that introduced the concept of quantum curious.
Speaker:Now before quantum before Candace answers,
Speaker:she's being very modest. Her dad was a big quantum physicist
Speaker:and early pioneer in
Speaker:quantum computing. And maybe she'll talk about that.
Speaker:But what to you means quantum curious? Like what because
Speaker:I think that's really kind of our new tagline now is, you know, a podcast
Speaker:for the quantum curious. So to you, what is quantum
Speaker:curious? I think quantum curious is everybody
Speaker:who genuinely, wants to understand
Speaker:what quantum computing, quantum engineering,
Speaker:the mechanics of quantum, what it's about. Why
Speaker:should you care. And it's kind of interesting
Speaker:because it's the first time for me something that is
Speaker:so technical, I can look at
Speaker:from an outside perspective that is completely non technical.
Speaker:Like, people say quantum, they go, physics.
Speaker:Like, you don't have to really understand physics
Speaker:to
Speaker:background and understanding, you know, what
Speaker:technologies are important and then say, okay. Everyone's talking about
Speaker:quantum. Well, like, well, what really is quantum?
Speaker:Like, what does it mean? And what does it mean to
Speaker:me versus what does it mean to someone like you,
Speaker:Frank? And how we can come together. And we can
Speaker:just go all the way down to the basics of it and talk about,
Speaker:you know, cubits and and get get
Speaker:all molecular about it and say, what does
Speaker:this mean? What does this do? And when you look at it from the
Speaker:outside, you know, and I, I talk a lot on my YouTube channel
Speaker:about parenting neurodiversity, and I'm
Speaker:really interested in strength based knowledge that
Speaker:shows why people who think differently
Speaker:are incredibly valuable, because that's just how
Speaker:they think, and it makes sense to them. So quantum is
Speaker:something that can be really made sense to people, for
Speaker:example, who are on the autistic spectrum, or who have
Speaker:ADHD, or who are dyslexic. Because
Speaker:it's strange, but it's about how they think and how they make these
Speaker:natural connections in their minds that the neurotypical
Speaker:just can't make. They just don't see them.
Speaker:And I used to always market myself and my skills
Speaker:and tell people that I'm like the fixer's elixir.
Speaker:Right? Like, I just always say this, like, I connect
Speaker:really well with people totally authentically because I'm super
Speaker:interested in what people do. But after I talk to you for a little
Speaker:while, you know, my brain is a buzzing and it's
Speaker:making these connections to other people that I've met,
Speaker:where if you had a conversation with them, it could lead
Speaker:to some innovation. And I might not have to
Speaker:understand it, but I understand it enough to
Speaker:know where these connections are happening. And that's what
Speaker:brings me back to quantum because these ideas of
Speaker:these cubits, the molecular level that they can change their positioning
Speaker:and their entanglement, and people talk about chaos,
Speaker:but then the clarity of moments that happen
Speaker:where the genius rises, right?
Speaker:That's what a lot of people who face neurotypical
Speaker:learning patterns deal with. They have all this chaos, all
Speaker:this information. Screens are lighting up thousands
Speaker:in their minds at a time, but then they have to be able to
Speaker:hyperfocus quantum on an idea.
Speaker:And then all of a sudden, it becomes this this concept. It just
Speaker:it totally forms in your mind, and then you understand
Speaker:it. And there's this weird connection. I find it very
Speaker:exciting. So that's my long answer.
Speaker:No. That's fine. And, you know, and it's also, like, it takes a village. You
Speaker:know, you're gonna need the marketers for these, you know, and and we've spoken
Speaker:to you and I recently spoken to a number of of of
Speaker:quantum startup founders, over the
Speaker:years, over the two seasons, you know, spoken to a few more,
Speaker:quantum guests, you know, that are, you know, influential in the space, whether
Speaker:they're researchers, business advisors, or, you know, founders
Speaker:themselves. And I think that one of the things that I don't think people truly
Speaker:appreciate just yet is that if
Speaker:you have some understanding of quantum computing, right,
Speaker:you don't really need to have an understanding of quantum physics. Obviously, that helps.
Speaker:But just like you don't need to be a mathematician or a mathematics
Speaker:PhD or statistician to understand AI and work with
Speaker:AI, market AI, I think the same holds true here. So, you
Speaker:know, all these startups, you know, they're out there for quantum computing.
Speaker:I haven't checked the latest statistics on, you know, how many
Speaker:there are. But quantum computing is starting to become
Speaker:something that people talk about now and not
Speaker:just in kinda technical circles. Right? Obviously, I live in the Washington
Speaker:DC area. So, obviously, there's the national security aspect
Speaker:of it. Right? Part of it is, and if you want a video to watch
Speaker:on this, there's a YouTube channel called the yFiles.
Speaker:And they did an episode, we'll put it in the show notes, called the quantum
Speaker:apocalypse. I think it's just a little too melodramatic,
Speaker:but nothing in there was incorrect. Right? Everything in there was
Speaker:factual. You know, at least, you know, not the conjecture stuff, but
Speaker:it was basically talking about how, and I was explaining this to you. Right? And
Speaker:this is what got me interested back in the topic again. So
Speaker:everyone who uses encryption every day. Now encryption
Speaker:used to be the stuff of kings and generals.
Speaker:Not necessarily the average medieval peasant or the
Speaker:average merchant. Right? But now with the Internet,
Speaker:everything we do or nearly everything we do is
Speaker:protected through some form of encryption. So whether you buy a book
Speaker:on Amazon, whether you buy, you know, something on
Speaker:Etsy or whatever, pay for your subscription to Netflix.
Speaker:Your credit card, your data is protected, or at least it should be
Speaker:protected through a basically through a
Speaker:quirk of mathematics, a quirk of computation
Speaker:and and mathematics. So the idea is that it's
Speaker:hard to reverse factor. It's
Speaker:hard to factor primes. So the short dollar store
Speaker:answer or Timo answer, I guess, what what the kids say now,
Speaker:is that it's very easy for you to
Speaker:know what three times five is. What's three times five? It's
Speaker:15. Now if I had asked, what are the factors
Speaker:of 15? You'd have to stop and think about that. One, you have to
Speaker:go back to math class and figure out what do you says factor? What does
Speaker:that mean? What does that mean? Not fear factor like Joe
Speaker:Rogan. But, basically, the idea of, you
Speaker:know, what parts of numbers multiply to make another number.
Speaker:Right? So multiplication is easy. Reverse fact reverse doing
Speaker:that in reverse is a lot more computationally difficult for both
Speaker:the human mind and current day com computers,
Speaker:which is something that RSA and most forms of
Speaker:encryption that we use in our daily lives takes advantage of that
Speaker:fact. Quantum computing
Speaker:turns out might be able to do that a lot faster to the
Speaker:tune of minutes as opposed to either years or thousands of
Speaker:years. That could have
Speaker:severe consequences for commerce, national
Speaker:security, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So one of the interesting things
Speaker:about encryption in general,
Speaker:is the idea that if it encryption
Speaker:doesn't have to secure something forever. It just has to
Speaker:secure something for a set period of time. Okay. Right? So
Speaker:if if somebody's able to break my credit card number and it takes them,
Speaker:say, a hundred years, well, certainly not my problem anymore.
Speaker:Right. Right? If
Speaker:it takes them a year to do it, well, it becomes my problem.
Speaker:Mhmm. Right? And there was an interesting quote. I believe it was from,
Speaker:might have been Abraham Lincoln when they were trying to
Speaker:decode ciphers and codes from,
Speaker:the civil war. Mhmm. And it was basically it took somebody,
Speaker:like, I don't know, a year to decode a message that the confederates
Speaker:had had said. And it was kind of like, well, we really need this
Speaker:information faster because this already happened. And I could be
Speaker:misremembering it or fusing things in my brain because, hey, that happens.
Speaker:But it's the notion that time is really a crucial
Speaker:factor in encryption or security around encryption. So
Speaker:if you come up with some kind of way, you say, well, you know, it'll
Speaker:take a thousand years of compute time to reverse engineer this.
Speaker:Even if advances in compute speed
Speaker:proceed like we've seen with, you know, personal computers over the last, you know, how
Speaker:many decades? Moore's law for the for those kids at home,
Speaker:one of the actual term. It's the idea that processing speed will double somewhere
Speaker:between every eighteen to twenty four months.
Speaker:So even if I say in January 2025,
Speaker:this will take, you know, a hundred years to break, even if there's some kind
Speaker:of radical improvement over the next two years,
Speaker:four, six, eight, ten years, it's still
Speaker:within a certain margin of
Speaker:safety in terms of being that data being able to be decrypted.
Speaker:Quantum computers could turn that from, you know, say, we get it
Speaker:down from a hundred down to fifty, down to, you know, maybe thirty
Speaker:years. It's still, you know, safe depending on what it is. Right?
Speaker:Obviously, if it's information, you know, around secret nuclear codes, that's a
Speaker:different story. But if it's around my credit card number, if it's
Speaker:broken in thirty years, you know,
Speaker:that's a that's a problem that future Frank will have to deal with. Right?
Speaker:Obviously, if it's a hundred years, yeah. I'd like to think future Frank
Speaker:will be around, but, you know, that is
Speaker:double the lifespan. Yeah. Quantum curious Candace is not gonna be
Speaker:here in a hundred years. Quantum quantum quantum computer is, curious Candace is not gonna
Speaker:be there. But if a quantum computer could do it potentially within
Speaker:minutes Yeah. Which is what we're looking at through the implementation
Speaker:of something called Shor's algorithm. And what's interesting about
Speaker:Shor's algorithm now we're gonna have to pull up the Google to figure out
Speaker:exactly when this would came out. But Shor's algorithm
Speaker:was created not last year, but
Speaker:this was,
Speaker:1994 is when this came out. So
Speaker:what's particularly fascinating is a lot of
Speaker:quantum computing researchers like your dad were able to kind of
Speaker:work out these algorithms and thoughts on the chalkboard
Speaker:or whiteboard, before the machines were built.
Speaker:And I think that's fascinating. And that gets into somewhere else. We can go down
Speaker:deep rabbit hole, like information theory versus, you know, how we got to computers
Speaker:because people were were were contemplating binary encoding
Speaker:before there were really systems that took advantage of that.
Speaker:And we're seeing the same thing with quantum computing, which I think that
Speaker:typically history, if it doesn't outright repeat itself, it certainly rhymes.
Speaker:And I think we are at a point, an inflection point with quantum computing,
Speaker:where we are really on the cusp
Speaker:of something big. Whether that'll happen this
Speaker:year, whether that'll happen in five years, or if you wanna go, you
Speaker:know, kind of ruin everybody's day like Jensen Long did. Say it'll
Speaker:it could take twenty years. We'll talk about that, I guess, in a future
Speaker:episode. But it it will happen, but I
Speaker:think we're really at an inflection point because a lot of innovation is being done.
Speaker:Willow, the Google research project,
Speaker:that, proved did some quantum computations,
Speaker:that what was it, Candace? Like, something like 13,000,000,000,000 years or something like that.
Speaker:Yeah. We're done in, like, ninety seconds. Something like that. Right. Right. Absolutely.
Speaker:Yes. Now and then they also said, well, maybe we're
Speaker:tapping into parallel universes and things like that. And who knows if that's
Speaker:true? Who knows? Right? But I think from a practical point of view, if you
Speaker:wanna step back and be quantum curious, not necessarily into the physics of
Speaker:it per se. Mhmm. But I think there's a story there. I mean,
Speaker:what if, you know, trillions of years of compute
Speaker:could be done in moments or minutes? Well,
Speaker:certainly, that rains on the parade of every crypto cryptographic algorithm that
Speaker:exists today. So quantum canvas, quantum
Speaker:canvas may not be around in a hundred years.
Speaker:But, you know, if you can do trillions of years of computation in
Speaker:in in the span of, you know, ten minutes or less, then clearly, that's a
Speaker:problem. Right. What does that mean? Now,
Speaker:obviously, there's more to it than that. Right? So one of the interesting things
Speaker:about this is, that once you kind of delve
Speaker:into the quantum rabbit hole, it gets pretty deep.
Speaker:And what's exciting about this isn't so much being worried
Speaker:about breaking encryption or knowing credit cards or state secrets quickly,
Speaker:Although that is a point of concern. I think the
Speaker:exciting thing is what this could do for the environment.
Speaker:Right? So if you look at the
Speaker:humble plant, right, it could do a
Speaker:number of things that science has really, I wouldn't say struggled with, but
Speaker:takes a lot more effort to do than necessarily a
Speaker:plant could do. One of those is nitrogen, pulling nitrogen out of the
Speaker:air, which if I remember my high school biology, it's something
Speaker:called the process called nitrogen fixation. Okay. It
Speaker:was not until I think it was a German guy,
Speaker:the Huber process.
Speaker:Haber process. It's also called
Speaker:the Haber Bosch process, which basically takes
Speaker:nitrogen in the atmosphere, which remember, the atmosphere is
Speaker:80% nitrogen, 20% everything else, mostly oxygen.
Speaker:So it should be theoretically easy to just grab nitrogen out of the
Speaker:air. Turns out it's not. And there's many chemical
Speaker:reasons. And last time I took a chemistry class,
Speaker:Kurt Cobain was not only alive, but he had not become famous yet.
Speaker:So Okay. Okay. But the short of it is that the way
Speaker:nitrogen exists in the atmosphere, it's very hard to pull that out.
Speaker:Very strong chemical bonds, and it wasn't until,
Speaker:the nineteen hundreds, something like
Speaker:1918. It was a direct result of World War
Speaker:one, that he that this was figured out
Speaker:because nitrogen is very important in explosives.
Speaker:Yes. Which if you are a country at
Speaker:war, being able to make explosives, kind of
Speaker:important. Right. If you are a country at war,
Speaker:and you are blockaded from any other external sources of nitrogen,
Speaker:or available nitrogen, that's a problem. That was a problem for, the
Speaker:Germans in World War one. It's also
Speaker:nitrogen turns out is important for,
Speaker:agriculture. Growing, getting more plants out
Speaker:of, to grow more food out of the same plot
Speaker:of land. Right? So what, but it turns out
Speaker:that the Haber the Huber process, the Haber process I'm totally
Speaker:mispronouncing it. The Haber process, is very energy
Speaker:intensive. And some people estimate that about a
Speaker:third of the world's energy use.
Speaker:Is it for GPUs? Is it for training LLMs? Although maybe
Speaker:that'll change sometime this year. It's to
Speaker:create nitrogen for fertilizer
Speaker:and presumably explosives too. Right? Right.
Speaker:Okay. So what if now
Speaker:plants can do this entirely on their own, like seeds, bacterium in the
Speaker:ground? They can totally do this on their
Speaker:own. How are they able to do it? Because they don't have
Speaker:mass factories in them. Right? Right. How is it able to do
Speaker:it? So you have the potential of if you
Speaker:can do it with the scale of energy,
Speaker:or, you know, reduce the or increase the efficiency to the point where it happens
Speaker:in nature. Right. You could have up to a
Speaker:third more of the energy production in the world
Speaker:Either Be used for other things or not at all Right. And
Speaker:these do tend to be very carbon heavy things, which is a concern for those
Speaker:worried about global warming if you're not worried about global
Speaker:warming then, you know imagine if one third of the fossil fuels in the
Speaker:world were now available for other uses. Costs would go down,
Speaker:well, not immediately, but pretty quickly. And, and that's what, you
Speaker:know, when you first started saying environment, my head immediately went
Speaker:to, you know, what can quantum do? It can obviously
Speaker:do better climate predictions. Absolutely. You
Speaker:know, taking in the data and really improving the
Speaker:accuracy and forecasting. Optimized
Speaker:energy. Quantum algorithms could optimize the power
Speaker:grids, reducing energy waste, and
Speaker:working on improving renewable energy integration.
Speaker:Right? Absolutely. Demand prediction. I mean, the list
Speaker:goes on. And here's something, Candace, that that that and
Speaker:I'm kinda passionate about. Like, so I had I built some solar
Speaker:panel generators and stuff like that. Right? And it was really
Speaker:disappointing to find out that solar panels are
Speaker:only, very not very minimally efficient.
Speaker:I mean, talking like a third efficient. Like, so a
Speaker:third of the the energy just doesn't get used. Like, can you
Speaker:imagine? You know?
Speaker:No. That's not what I would be thinking at all. So,
Speaker:obviously, because of various,
Speaker:physics reasons, it'll never be a % efficient. But according to
Speaker:my hastily typed in research,
Speaker:a third is actually pretty generous. Most of residential solar panel
Speaker:systems have efficiencies between
Speaker:19.721.6%. High end,
Speaker:high efficiency panels can get up to 23%. That
Speaker:means that roughly, if you can go to the store or buy it
Speaker:on Amazon, the solar panels that you have are basically throwing
Speaker:away four fifths of the energy that it's getting from the
Speaker:sun. Good. Yet
Speaker:plants do a pretty good job of doing this efficiently.
Speaker:Plants plants basically are you know, leaves on plants are
Speaker:effectively miniature natural solar panels. What they do
Speaker:is photosynthesis, if you remember from, learning as a kid,
Speaker:takes carbon dioxide out of the air,
Speaker:water, and sunlight to break apart the water molecule
Speaker:and some of that carbon and then drop it into
Speaker:basically sugar molecules. Mhmm.
Speaker:Plants do it on their own without being asked.
Speaker:Quietly. How do they do that? Right? And there's a lot of things that I
Speaker:think chemistry hasn't figured out because it's very hard to simulate molecular
Speaker:chemical interactions. In fact, there was, talking about how
Speaker:caffeine I think it was simulating the caffeine molecule, which is a relatively
Speaker:simple molecule as as these things go, you know,
Speaker:obliterates any computational capacity we have today,
Speaker:which is amazing to me. Right? And all of these
Speaker:things could be better simulated through quantum computers.
Speaker:So we could get more efficient solar panels. Right? So it could
Speaker:maybe get 80% of the sunlight from
Speaker:it. Right? Because of the pesky rules of thermodynamics,
Speaker:we'll never get a %, but 80% is way
Speaker:better than 20%. So you, you know, you can just imagine that all
Speaker:these massive solar farms that that that are there,
Speaker:this is what really annoyed me was like, wait a minute. So like, you know
Speaker:only in terms of the energy that comes from the Sun and a lot of
Speaker:solar panel enthusiasts Will talk
Speaker:about how much energy we get from the Sun and it's enough to power, you
Speaker:know Everybody on earth or something like that for so many hours
Speaker:per per per day come in here come from space
Speaker:But you know if you're only capturing 20 of it, that's a huge
Speaker:opportunity to increase that Quantum computing could help us
Speaker:find these ways, do the material science work to get
Speaker:better materials at this, as well as other things, performance
Speaker:in, you know, energy efficiency and, you know,
Speaker:material science. Right? Like launching rockets into space. Right?
Speaker:We're pretty much at the at the outer edge of what our material science can
Speaker:do, for, you know, dealing with pressure, heat,
Speaker:and extremes, and things like that. What if we had ways to
Speaker:synthesize materials or or find out how do we get to that point?
Speaker:There's also the opportunity to optimize the power
Speaker:grid and optimize power delivery systems. All sorts of these
Speaker:problems. Well, quantum computing alone will solve them. They
Speaker:become far more computationally approachable.
Speaker:It's the tool. It's it's it's not gonna change it, but it's the tool that
Speaker:you use, you know. And already, you know, in different
Speaker:sectors, this type of,
Speaker:probabilistic mentality
Speaker:is already in play. Like Right. You know, like, you have to think
Speaker:that in the finance sector, the quantum probabilist
Speaker:theories of of determination of where something is gonna go as absolutely
Speaker:got to already be in play. It it might be
Speaker:completely beyond what we understand, but, you know, based upon the
Speaker:theories of where something is supposed to go, the probability of it,
Speaker:you know, that's how they're making some decisions out there that are going to affect
Speaker:everybody. Like, there's different sectors that are already incorporating
Speaker:this kind of mentality as we speak. So
Speaker:it's important for us to grasp as much as we can from
Speaker:just from the start to see how it can make things better.
Speaker:Interesting. I think. Right? Yeah. I mean, it really is.
Speaker:And, it it's fascinating to see
Speaker:how we can get to more efficient systems, whether or not,
Speaker:you know, what the specifics are around plants and their efficiency, how much
Speaker:solar energy they get, I think, varies on
Speaker:species and and things like that. But it can we can
Speaker:do better, I think, is basically it. We can do better in a lot of
Speaker:ways. And what's interesting was I saw a post today on LinkedIn where
Speaker:they had said, something to the effect
Speaker:of, you know, the top quantum companies or something like that. Not
Speaker:stardust, but companies using it. Curiously, a
Speaker:financial institution was number two on the list and has been number two on the
Speaker:list for quite some time. Mhmm. So if I find that cause you know what
Speaker:happens when you refresh the page or whatever, the the Yes. Post is
Speaker:gone forever. Right. So I need to dig that up. But I mean,
Speaker:that's fascinating. So, you know, simulating markets, simulating
Speaker:risk, simulating supply chains could be done. You can do it
Speaker:today with conventional systems. But again, if if it takes you, you
Speaker:know, it takes you, you know, six months to
Speaker:do a computation to calculate what the weather's gonna be tomorrow.
Speaker:It's not really useful. And I think yeah.
Speaker:But to determine kind of, you know, when this type of storm is
Speaker:headed this, you know, headed into this type of area during this type of
Speaker:season, you know, can mama go take a trip to Punta Cana? But this
Speaker:is this is important stuff to know. No. Exactly.
Speaker:Right. These are the types of simulations where
Speaker:if you could do them today, you won't get them in time. You won't get
Speaker:the answers in time, or they're just computationally expensive, expensive to the
Speaker:point where it's just not worth doing it. It's not worth doing. Exactly. And that
Speaker:that's that has to change. Absolutely. Right? And I think we
Speaker:really are on the cusp of these things, changing. I
Speaker:think it's not that far off when,
Speaker:you know, I don't think we're
Speaker:we're not imminently going to get a, you know, a little device on
Speaker:our, you know, the next iPhone isn't gonna have a Q tip. You know, it
Speaker:won't be called the Q phone. Right. But,
Speaker:we will get to a point where, you know, these will probably exist in
Speaker:servers and data centers for the near future, but it's not
Speaker:impossible to imagine you could have some kind of quantum sensor or
Speaker:quantum, device or chip on
Speaker:some future mobile device. Probably not in the next five years.
Speaker:This will take a while, I think. But in terms of practical quantum
Speaker:computing being in the data center, I think a lot of that hint
Speaker:to to to quote Jensen Huang,
Speaker:he, smart guy, but he also has a bit of a, you
Speaker:know, he also sells competing equipment to do
Speaker:parallel computation, which he would it would it would behoove him
Speaker:for this to take longer than, and and five
Speaker:two years. Right. It would behoove him to to kind of rain on people's
Speaker:parades. So I think that
Speaker:the when you'll see practical quantum computers in the data center, I
Speaker:think hinges very much on what your definition of practical
Speaker:is. If your definition of practical is, you know, you just go,
Speaker:you you stack it and rack it like you would in a typical data
Speaker:center, or you have something that can do this
Speaker:on, you know, have something
Speaker:in your phone or or something like that. I think that might be a ways
Speaker:off. But I think in terms of it being something that
Speaker:anyone can access through, you know, some kind of cloud service, I mean, you can
Speaker:kinda do that now. Right? There were a lot of
Speaker:limitations around it, but, you know, if you go back to the early days
Speaker:of computing, so were
Speaker:computers. Computers were custom built. It was really only IBM that kinda said, hey. You
Speaker:can buy a computer, put it in the box. And I say box
Speaker:like a box truck. Right? And you would ship it to
Speaker:your office and you would install it and things like that. But,
Speaker:I think though, you know, we kinda have that now,
Speaker:and I think we're really at that that mainframe era of
Speaker:of of quantum computers. Right? Or maybe even earlier than that or around
Speaker:the same time where you have transistors. I think it has I think it's gonna
Speaker:be a necessity thing. I think the first, you know, major sector
Speaker:that is gonna need it the most might just break
Speaker:through. Yes. And, you know, like and I think that
Speaker:there's so much, you know, quantum sensing that
Speaker:you could do for environmental monitoring. Like, you could be
Speaker:looking at greenhouse gases and water quality, you
Speaker:know, deforestation prevention. Like, there's just, you
Speaker:know, things that that are really practical. I mean, look what look at what just
Speaker:happened in LA. Right? Yep. And we're talking about,
Speaker:you know, I think they said, like, 10,000 homes, but it's
Speaker:over a trillion dollars worth of real estate.
Speaker:You know, anything that is going to work, you know, to
Speaker:help, I guess, even insurance companies to continue
Speaker:to last. Like, there's no way some insurance companies aren't gonna
Speaker:totally go belly up over all of this. Right? And a lot of them had
Speaker:pulled out because they had kinda done the math and they they were like, They
Speaker:can't survive. Us for us. And my art goes
Speaker:out to a lot of those folks because Oh, absolutely.
Speaker:You know, they bought into the California dream not realizing that, you know,
Speaker:hey. It's either gonna burn down or get flooded and Or
Speaker:shook or shaken to death. Shaken to death. Absolutely. Or shaken. And and that's
Speaker:and that's the thing, like and so I kind of wonder if it's, you know,
Speaker:what's hap I mean, lately, it's the environment that's been attacking
Speaker:us the most in terms of, you know, these massive
Speaker:floods that people are losing their homes, these mudslides, these
Speaker:fires, all of the all of the
Speaker:tornadoes. I mean, Tornado Alley is, like, twice as
Speaker:big as it was when we were growing up. You know what I'm saying? Like,
Speaker:so I think that the the financial
Speaker:outlay that is happening because of these disasters, it it really is
Speaker:gonna behoove certain sectors to kind of push
Speaker:forward and get ahead of themselves a little bit to realize how can they
Speaker:can save themselves. Right? Well, absolutely. Plus, we're also
Speaker:building in places where there weren't population centers before. Right?
Speaker:Florida being a big example. Right? Florida used to not be
Speaker:a major population center like it is today. And, you know, they
Speaker:are very vulnerable to hurricanes. Right? Absolutely. Even if they
Speaker:Go ahead. No. Even if, like, the the the the if you had the same
Speaker:number of hurricanes standard over time, the damage amounts are gonna go
Speaker:way up because more people live there. You know? And
Speaker:it's kinda like we didn't, you know, it's basically the unintended
Speaker:consequences, you know, in terms of,
Speaker:of how people develop these properties. Right? They don't think about,
Speaker:like, you know, it's the insurance company's problem. Well, now I think a lot of
Speaker:these things are coming too. And, you know, somebody was on TV
Speaker:basically saying, you know, LA is a city built in desert
Speaker:on top of earthquake faults and fire zones. Like, what did you
Speaker:think would happen? Right. You know, maybe maybe it's
Speaker:not just hurt. Maybe it's not just climate change. Maybe it's,
Speaker:you know, we gambled for so long. We had a we had such
Speaker:a winning run. We didn't realize we were winning. Right. And now it
Speaker:starts. Now the the odds eventually catch
Speaker:up with you. I mean but, again, these are all things that you can kind
Speaker:of at least you can't stop, but you can at least be more aware
Speaker:with better computational tools like quantum computers.
Speaker:And I think it's it's fascinating to see how this will go. And we didn't
Speaker:even really mention quantum sensing, which I'm not
Speaker:I I I can't separate what's woo woo versus what's real, but it's the
Speaker:idea that you can kind of do this. You can fit
Speaker:you you can basically get extra
Speaker:data from sensors that could pick up quantum states
Speaker:through through other things. I'm not totally an expert on that. But what what's quantum
Speaker:sensing to you? Oh, you know, I thought it really had to do with the
Speaker:idea of the the determination and the detecting
Speaker:factors that, you know, you could use quantum science
Speaker:behind to help with,
Speaker:again, monitoring a certain type of system.
Speaker:So, no, I wanted you to help me more on the quantum sensing. So
Speaker:I have, ChatGPT. Basically, give me a a one
Speaker:sentence thing, but it's basically getting extremely sensitive measurements of
Speaker:physical quantities such as time, magnetic fields,
Speaker:temperature, electrical fields, pressure, and even gravitational fields.
Speaker:So it's basically turning up the sensitivity of our existing sensors,
Speaker:sensing capacity to 11. Okay. It reminds me of the guys that
Speaker:were, like, that, like, chase that chase the, that chase the storms.
Speaker:And they're getting all of the most raw
Speaker:hot data you could possibly get by being in the middle of it
Speaker:all. So yeah. Okay. So that's
Speaker:exciting. So that's, like, that's also a thing. And I think, you
Speaker:know, we're focused, you know, on quantum computing, but there's also probably
Speaker:gonna be adjacent
Speaker:technologies to this quantum sensing. Right? Building these quantum sensors and things like that. There's
Speaker:also an interesting concept called quantum entanglement. We did mention
Speaker:this before. And you wanna explain that real
Speaker:quick? Well, quantum entanglement, I
Speaker:believe, had to do with the the the state
Speaker:of all of the qubits and how they're moving
Speaker:around in every direction at the same time and how they're relating to each
Speaker:other. Why don't you give me a little bit
Speaker:more? So sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot there. That's
Speaker:okay. That's okay. But it's the idea that you if you can
Speaker:somehow untangle two particles, whether they're in the same room
Speaker:or on other sides of the universe, you change the state of one, you all
Speaker:instantaneously change the state of the other. Now there is
Speaker:some it did that violates many rules, not the least, which
Speaker:is, at least conventional rules. Right? Like,
Speaker:it's Einstein mocked it to a point. Spooky stuff. That's the spooky
Speaker:stuff, spooky action at a district. So he actually used that as a very
Speaker:pejorative term. Like, he was, like, making fun of it. But
Speaker:it's the idea. Now there's some debate over and we had one of the we
Speaker:were talking to some expert on those. And I was like, well,
Speaker:you know, if you look at it from one angle, hey,
Speaker:that's like Star Trek. You can get, you know, communication faster than the speed
Speaker:of light. Right? But that alone violates many,
Speaker:many rules and upsets a lot of people. Right? But even if that's not the
Speaker:case, even if it doesn't go faster than the speed of light, anyone
Speaker:who who has a cell phone and gets a dead spot
Speaker:knows the frustration of having poor signal. Theoretically,
Speaker:if you had these, you know, entangled particles, you could
Speaker:have basically a cell phone or some communication system
Speaker:that would work anywhere. I mean, that's better than five g.
Speaker:That's better than six g. I mean, that's, like, 10 g. You know what I
Speaker:mean? So Right. That alone would be worth it. And I could also
Speaker:imagine it's not hard to imagine maybe because I live in the DC area. Right?
Speaker:The defense implications of this. Right? You can have submarines that can have high
Speaker:fidelity, high bandwidth, communications
Speaker:that would not be blocked by oceans or possibly not even detected
Speaker:by, any other, you know, adversary.
Speaker:I mean, it it boggles the mind. And I really think
Speaker:we're on we're really, I think, at the precipice of this. Right?
Speaker:Because everything we, you know, we call them electronics. And, basically,
Speaker:your your phone, your computer, your
Speaker:television, your car basically has
Speaker:electrons running around in a maze that do
Speaker:things. That's ultimately how all of these things work. It's basically,
Speaker:you know, circuits printed in
Speaker:silicon. Mhmm. Right? And that's how our world
Speaker:works. And it's gotten us pretty far,
Speaker:but we're pushing the point of engineering where
Speaker:We can't really take it much further And it's been a good
Speaker:run. It's been almost one hundred years So this
Speaker:really could be Obviously, there's a lot of engineering
Speaker:concerns that that have to be worked out error correction being one of them We'll
Speaker:get into that in a future episode. Why that is and what
Speaker:why that's important and why right now it's a limiting factor.
Speaker:There's enormous potential here, and I think anyone
Speaker:and everyone should be quantum curious because this is going to have major impacts from
Speaker:the price of gasoline to how effective
Speaker:your, solar panels are to your
Speaker:batteries. Right? We mentioned material science. Right? One of the big problems with renewables
Speaker:is how do you store the energy? Right. Battery technology,
Speaker:as anyone at the cell phone knows, stinks. Yeah.
Speaker:It's true. What if we can get that better? What if we could get that
Speaker:cheaper? What if we don't have to rely on these rare earth minerals to
Speaker:capture and store this information? And what if we can make it more efficient?
Speaker:All these things could be improved upon
Speaker:by quantum computing.
Speaker:I I was very excited by this conversation. I
Speaker:can't wait to delve into so much more. I'm I'm
Speaker:just I'm even more excited than I was before we started.
Speaker:And you know how much I've been into this lately. Absolutely. Absolutely. So
Speaker:I'm looking forward to exploring the space with you all. And, you know,
Speaker:we're gonna get some startup founders on here, but we're we're gonna keep
Speaker:the focus less on the engineering, although we will bring
Speaker:up those engineering ones. And just as a reference in the in
Speaker:the pre in the what Bailey had said was talking about Schrodinger's, we're
Speaker:reading the complexity of each show from zero to five Schrodinger's.
Speaker:And it's the idea that, you know, zero is pretty much, you know, you can
Speaker:talk to your grandma about it. Right. Five is you
Speaker:probably would want to take migraine medicine
Speaker:and get a couple of PhDs in there. I think mostly we're gonna have two
Speaker:and three. Right? With the occasional four and five. But I also think that
Speaker:the economic implications of this, the social implications of this are
Speaker:enormous, and I think we can't ignore that. I completely agree. I think
Speaker:it's gonna be exciting to talk about, to be able to show how much it
Speaker:expands into other aspects of our world, you know,
Speaker:both personally, you know, and professionally, and to show
Speaker:what we all can gain from it. Absolutely.
Speaker:That's a wrap for this episode of Impact Quantum, where we take the
Speaker:uncertainty out of quantum computing. Well, as much as physics
Speaker:allows. If you enjoyed this dive into the quantum realm, don't
Speaker:forget to like, subscribe, and share because quantum effects
Speaker:are better when they're observed. Have questions, feedback,
Speaker:or a quantum paradox you'd like us to untangle? Reach
Speaker:out and we might just collapse the waveform in a future episode.
Speaker:Until next time stay curious stay entangled and
Speaker:remember just because we can't measure something doesn't mean it's not
Speaker:real. Impact quantum demystifying quantum one
Speaker:qubit at a time.