Quantum Has Landed What Would You Build First

Salam alaikum and good afternoon everyone. I'm Ali Mahin Ahmed, features editor at Entrepreneur Middle East. Before we jump into the panel, just a quick introduction to the brand. Uh, I'm sure Entrepreneur as a brand is not one that most in the room are unfamiliar with, but for those who do need a refresher, we are indeed the regional edition of the US-based publication entrepreneur. And as such, we pride ourselves on being the voice of innovation and entrepreneurship in the region.

Um, so last year on something of a whim, I read this book called Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feainman. I'm not saying this to share my reading list with you. Uh but the gentleman who wrote this book, Richard Feainman, uh did a speech at MIT in 1982, which is precisely the reason 44 years later we're even having this panel discussion today. Richard Feainman is unanimously regarded as one of the foremost contributors to quantum computing.

And in this particular book, he ends it with a quote that I feel like we need to start this panel with. He says, "I would like to add something that is not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist." And like Georgia mentioned, this is a somewhat complex topic, somewhat novel topic, and we hope that this panel can somewhat make it accessible to the masses. So I'll start with you Steve

just to ensure that we're on a bit of a similar starting point in the room today. If you could briefly explain what quantum computing is and how they differ from the classical computers that we know and you know the evolved versions of super the supercomputers

and I I have three hours to do that is no. [laughter]

Um no hi everybody and it's pleasure to be here. Um what I'd like you to think about is your operating system. So, some of you guys have iPhones, right? That operating system is made by Apple computer. Uh, you have Windows laptops that are made by Microsoft.

These are all man-made operating systems. The really cool thing about quantum is that we're using mother nature's operating system of how things work. Quantum mechanical. Even the strongest quant, even the strongest supercomput today works on ones and zeros. But what makes quantum so special is that it can be in both states at the same time through this concept called superposition.

When you combine superposition with entanglement, which means two particles that are tied together and it doesn't matter how far apart they are in the universe. I can have a particle here on Earth and one in Pluto and if something happens to this particle, it impacts the other particle. That's faster than the speed of light. And it's it's what happens in quantum mechanics. Actually, Einstein used to call it spooky action out of the distance.

We know it happens, but it's really hard uh to to understand. So the great thing about this technology is that it can give us exponential speed up in certain very specific use cases um and uh do a lot of really good I know we have a lot of finance people in here in financial services but it also threatens our cryptography around RSA and elliptical which I'm sure the panelists will talk about. So I hope that at a basic level just explains what it is.

Absolutely. Now that we've sort of said that base, Leandra, I'll come to you next. Uh, you at the Quantum Research Center, which falls under the Abu Dhabi government's Advanced Technology Research Council, you essentially oversee the development of state-of-the-art nextgen quantum technologies. We'll come to the opportunities in just a bit, but let's talk about the challenges. There is one very obvious impediment to quantum computing, which is the fact that the quantum computers need to be stored at extremely cold temperatures.

Again for the audiences if you read it online it says somewhere between -273.14 to -273.15°C which is extremely cool. But let's also talk about realizing quantum computing on a large scale and some of the other equally pressing challenges from both a hardware and software perspective.

Yes, thank you. The main uh challenges there are two types of challenges. There's at the hardware level and at the software level. At the hardware level, the main challenge is first to build new uh types of cubits that have longer coherence times and that can um have higher fidelity, but at the same time to scale up to many many cubits, right? So the big challenge is how to go from uh laboratory demonstrations on few hundreds of cubits to really one million uh cubit chip architectures that can support advanced quantum error correction techniques.

Right? And uh that's a very hard engineering challenge. But even if you told me okay I give you today a large scale fter on quantum computer there are there are also challenges at the software level. So what happens at the level of quantum algorithms is that there are uh very few examples that for which we have strong evidence of having let's say uh exponential quantum runtime speed up in an end toend uh sense of the application. Right?

So there are some evidence for some problems right but then that's also something very pressing. So it also requires further investments into quantum algorithms and quantum software research right so lots of investment had gone recently on quantum hardware and this is improving a lot but there's still too few problems for which we have strong evidences of very big uh quantum runtime speed up right so these are big challenges to be solved in the in the next few years and this makes our field very exciting also both for investors and scientists too. Perfect. Marwan, I'll come to you next. Uh, you know, the the crux of this panel is what would it be like if we were quantum ready tomorrow?

Say we did achieve quantum capabilities. We unlocked complete quantum capabilities tomorrow. What would be the top two to three uh industries that can unlock research and innovation that has hitherto been impossible?

Yeah. So that's that's a good question and I think uh with my colleagues it's very important basically to set the stage where quantum does not solve everything as what what my colleague was saying it's very specific for some task and this is I think a quite general I would say trend within basically computing where uh we're mostly not anymore very general purpose but we're trying basically to build systems which are very tailored analog computing quantum computing you have optical computing all these are within basically trends where we saw saw that we have massive gains by being more specialized. I mean, if some people here on AI, you have GPUs and CPUs, typically you're not going to use a GPU to do your your your your word document typically. And so, if you want to paralyze, you're going to do it. And so, coming back to your question, of course, the big uh opportunities are where of course you have specific cases where this massive scale of solving problem and optimizing them kicks in.

One of the big things that people are looking at beside the cryptographic case which comes back often is drug discovery. So a lot of of problems in in biology where you need to simulate a lot of of of of molecules which the number of nodes the number of billion nodes would take you years to do you want to do it in a couple of seconds. So in the field of drug discovery I think there's great opportunities in simulating all these events that you're having and being able of course to rerun events at a speed at a certain speed. The second also basically is everything related to network optimization of problems. I [snorts] mean uh I'm putting optimization as a general basically uh purpose technology using quantum because optimization is nearly everywhere and large scale problems are there.

I mean Adino here in the UEE has been heav investing heavily trying to collaborate with quantum researchers to build some kind of use cases. But of course network optimization is a big thing. And the third one which I think is very important is basically where we're lying here is the financial services. Financial services are a lot of events that you cannot model. A lot of interactions that you need basically to to look at and how these things a lot of basically parameters that you need to take into account and these kind of of systems are very tailored.

I must admit that we are now within my university looking a lot on quantum AI. We still haven't figured out how some processes which are very specific to AI could run on quantum computers like the transformer architecture or whatever. But I think once this would be unlocked big potential in AI

absolutely now again for the audiences it was in October 2019 that Google announced that its sycamore processor had reached something known as quantum supremacy. To make it simple, what it really meant is something that takes classical computers 10,000 years to solve could now be solved in 200 seconds. So that sort of puts things into perspective. But for such robustness and speed to make its way into our day-to-day lives, scientists predict around another decade or so. But that isn't to say that such a future isn't coming.

But to ensure that we are ready for such a quantumdriven future, we need our business leaders, our startup founders, of course, governments to be prepared for it, to pre prepare to welcome it. Steve, uh, at MIT, you teach a course known as quantum computing strategy and impact, which is basically designed to help organizations understand what is coming and prepare with confidence. But in congruence with that, you are also helming the quantum index

which is basically it's a metric. It's a platform that recognizes the organizations that are quantum ready. If you had to pick out two to three traits in the organizations that have been more quantum agile compared to their peers and competitors right now, what would those three traits be?

Um, well, if you look at the quantum index, it's called the quantumindex.com. What we're doing is featuring the top companies that are using quantum computing in the use cases. So, we've got financial services. you could guess who's at the top of that list.

We've got automotive, life sciences. We were talking about how you can look to simulate uh drug discovery and we just released uh recently and I know for this region uh energy and so who are the top energy companies that are using quantum computing and how they're leveraging uh that technology. it is nent um they're in the beginning stages but I think it's a really good index to really show um who are the leaders so that you can understand how to leverage this uh technology one thing I will mention you mentioned the October uh article in actually when I used to be the global head of innovation at HSBC for global functions and I remember that day that that article came out I was asked to update the board to say hey Steve is our cryptography at risk and I had to kind of first educate myself and then explain to everybody look it's it's going to take a while but eventually you do need to look at it and it's got to be a concern. So I think that was a big turning point uh for me. So um from an education perspective take a look at who's leading and what they're doing uh what research papers they're doing what patents team size and these are all things that we evaluate uh in one of my companies which is called the quantum index

right um I'll continue that line of conversation with you Marwan you know by the time we are indeed quantum ready we will have a new generation of business leaders in the market more AIdriven more eager to learn perhaps What do you think needs to be changing in the classrooms within universities and schools? And perhaps an add-on to that would be what sort of collaborations do you think need to be happening between government, academia and the quantum industry to ensure that the next generation of leaders are quantum ready?

Yeah. So just to set up the stage here in the UEE, so we start having basically I would say a bit of a quantum readiness within a different organization. TI being one opening in a center and we got a lot of requests coming from different stakeholders. We we need talent and so I'm quite happy to announce that we took our responsibility and we're opening basically a master program and a PhD program on quantum at Khalifa University. So this is a big step basically I think in the Middle East to kickstart that kind of activity because of the needs that we're s starting.

Now of course we need to educate. Why I'm saying this is because wherever we we go even when we start talking to stakeholders or even students at university quantum is always about you know a cat which is locked in a box and nobody knows if he's dead or alive. That's always the example that they give me and and and nobody really understand what's useful. They tell me okay maybe we can discover if the cat is alive or dead. Of course there's an an a an important effect not only to educate what we're doing at Khalifa at a higher level but go on on the quantum literacy very low down.

[clears throat]

I'm very familiar with AI. In AI, we have been doing that. AI now is not anymore considered basically as something that needs to be taught at the very high level. We're starting to embed it in the UEE at the high school level but even on on at at the level of primary school and I dream of course of having a bit of quantum literacy because you don't need all I mean these kind of states things like that are important but you could still like transmit some messages on how these quantum stuff are used for kids and going on and I think this is a way we have to do because once you embed the new generation it grows up it starts also being to get interest and then we have all these leaders which are and I don't think we'll have a chief quantum officer like we have a chief AI officer at the stage but at least we get some leaders which are basically you know knowledgeable about the topic and then they can embed that and that requires of course an ecosystem the ecosystem of research I think started we are taking our responsibility at Khalifa by of course embedding quantum uh of course training within our different things and now we hope also that the people we're forming will start basically uh empowering those different organization to start also thinking on how you know we start purchasing quantum computers we start basically running some projects and we're seeing it as I gave you as an example adenoc today has been one of the big organization in energy which is now trying you know to push quantum to understand better how to do reservoir type of techniques

absolutely Leandra I will come to you and uh talk about something that both Steve and Mean touched upon and that's cryptography now in the midst of all the possibilities that quantum and potentially unlock. There is also this very palpable fear surrounding encryption. Again, to make it uh accessible to the audiences, our current digital systems are secured by something known as RSA encryption. And classical computers will take about thousands of years to decrypt any of these permutations and combinations. But I think we've sort of established now that quantum computers can do it in a fraction of a second.

So there is this fear that is uh sort of evident among uh leaders in your work at the quantum key distribution multiode test bed at ADGM in light of cryptography and also the wider UAE quantum ambitions. Uh could you please talk about the significance of the work you do there?

Yeah, thank you for the question. This is a very interesting development that we're doing at the quantum research center. In the quantum research center, we have a full stack approach to quantum technologies. We studied quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum algorithms and also quantum communications. So there's a very nice exercise that happened recently here.

It's a multi-node uh QKD system that is deployed at Abu Dhabi's financial heart connecting ADGM Abu Dhabi global market Audabi global market academy and hub 71 that kind of groups several startups in the fintech and se in the fintech sector right and there are not too many examples in the world of multi-node QKD systems deployed really I can count them with a with a single hand right with the fingers of a single hand and uh it's very nice it's a test bed this means that uh uh you know startups and and and stakeholders interested in trying it. they will be able to use um um uh uh you know secret key bits that are ready to use for encryption of communications namely messages or or zoom calls or you name it right this is running and it's collecting uh secret keys so it has a very high rate and it's very interesting because it shows the level of advancement of that type of technology right uh this is moving this is no longer just uh an experimental technology inside the lab this is already being deployed in the field Right. And uh for the moment like I said this is inside the Abu Dhabi uh financial heart. Uh we of course have plans to make this you know to to establish connections between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and eventually also internationally. So something else that we have uh at the quantum research center we have um an optical ground station operating 45 minutes drive from so in the Alwatva desert.

So you go there and we have like a telescope that is ready to receive single photons sent by future satellite missions that are going that that are planned for a long distance QKD transmission. Right? So the idea with quantum key distribution is if you do it you know in a short scale in a short distance you use telecom fiber webs but if you really want to do something international you need to rely on space communications right so that's actually very interesting uh this is already kind of closer to let's say commercial practicality and and and and and implications than let's say quantum computing technologies right um that's really an exciting thing that is going on right now

absolutely

my favorite panels are when I forget I'm the moderator and I get engrossed in the conversation. Um, we're down to like the last six minutes. I have two questions for all three of you. The first being, what is the what is the one big misconception about quantum computing that you've observed and how can we address that?

Steve, I'll start with you.

Um, the first uh I would say you don't have to be a quantum physicist. I'm actually lucky to be kind of surrounded with quantum physicists here. But um this is an opportunity for you to get involved, get engaged. Don't be intimidated by quantum mechanics. Um quantum is going to need people in every industry in every function.

Think about finance, think about HR, marketing. So if you're interested, and I really believe this is going to be the technology of the future. I'm excited about AI, but I'm incredibly excited about the potential uh within quantum. So, educate yourself. And unfort, this is not a plug, but it kind of is a plug.

I've got a class for executives um tailor made for executives at MIT for people that want to learn about quantum specifically around the finance field, which is where I came from.

M.

Yeah. So there's first of all a classical joke when when everybody starts uh basically presenting quantum uh at least quantum computing he starts like everybody knows what is a a classical uh computer let's start with quantum computer but I think nobody knows how a classical computer works so [laughter] at the end we're a bit stuck I think the big mistake is of course to think that quantum computers are classical computers with more speed it's not at all that it's not about speed uh because if you get into that of course you get to the to to the to the the the kind of thought that you know I'm going to have a classical computer and it's going to be charging much faster. We're talking about a different architecture which will not solve all the problems that you have. They are very specific to some specific tailored applications. The applications are very narrow.

However, the breakthroughs that you can do on those applications can have a fundamental impact. As of today, we know some cases in crypto was one uh this the security that we're talking about. We're seeing in bio and others where it goes and the gates are quite open. But having the idea that a quantum computer is a classical computer with more speed, I think this is what people unfortunately need to take out from their mind.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I totally resonate with what Mewan says. Quantum computers are not here to substitute classical ones. It's not that you're going to use a quantum computer to answer emails or these type of things, right? Uh they are going to be at le business model that quantum hardware providers and manufacturers are aiming at is really to think of QPUs as one more accelerator inside an HPC uh data center, right? So you may have GPUs and you may have also TPUs and then you also have quantum processing units to really solve very specific tasks, right?

Of course, at the moment to understand how to use these QPUs, you need to have a deep level of understanding of quantum computation, but I also agree with you that at some point when this functionalities will be better understood, then people will build kind of like blackbox sub routine for 19year-old kids to play with and innovate and create the new quantum startups of the future, right? Uh but it's a misconception to believe that quantum computers will replace classical ones, right? There will have to be lots of integration like I said with GPUs but also with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. In fact both quantum computers can end up uh uh having implications on more efficient AI algorithms but also classical AI algorithms is useful for quantum computing in particular for instance for quantum error correction. So u imagine you have like a quantum computer and there's noise and you need to correct for those uh uh uh for that noise and then you will have to have next to the quantum computer you will have to have a classical computer running a very smart and fast machine learning algorithm to kind of understand the errors taking place in the device and then correct them.

So these two fields are very synerggetic right there's lots of potential there too but really again quantum computer will be a new complimentary uh computing technology. Yeah,

from what I gather, I feel like all these developments are happening in silos. Of course, for it to become a more coherent industry, it will take us a few years. But let's talk about the one next immediate step organizations in the UAE, whether in finance or other industries can take towards becoming more quantum ready. If you had to advise business leaders for the one next immediate step that they can take, what?

It's education. You got to understand what's reality. These guys talked about it and what's hype. And with any new technology, there's going to be people that are going to overhype it. So understanding exactly what you can do and how you can use it will be key.

Absolutely. Uh Miriam,

yeah, I think also uh everything about quantum literacy is very important in these organization to understand better basically of course what you're aiming and basically what you can already do with the existing technology and where you're going. I think it's always difficult to forecast the future. We all know it. However, it betting on quantum is a good investment. The issue we have today with quantum is we are certain it's going to come but we don't know exactly when.

And so when you have that thing of course the only way you can tackle a future like that is to prepare.

Absolutely.

Yeah I resonate with that too. Um many people want to know what is going to be the killer application of quantum computer. That's the trillion dollar question right. But the truth is that it's a technology that it's in its infancy and then you need to let you need to let the baby grow to really see what it's going to be its best use cases. Right?

So something that uh is a safe investment is education awareness both at the executive level and at the education level. Right. So this is very important. It's some something that is on very high demand. Talent especially.

Absolutely. So [clears throat] I think moral of the panel is if we are to be well ready to welcome a quantum ready future we need to have quantum literacy in place and we need to be more educated about it. First thank you very much gentlemen. This has been a very engaging conversation. I hope you all have learned something and take some some real practical insights home as well.

Thank you very much for having been a wrapped audience. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.