Quantum Computing: The Next Frontier

[Music] I'm waiting for my first slide to move forward but uh thank you for staying for the last presentation oh there we go was too many slides at a time um for the very last presentation of the afternoon and it may be a bit of a strange uh jump from risk to Quantum Computing and I'll make the jump for you now and I just simply say those of you who just left they engaged in a big risky Behavior because they miss out on an important intellectual topic and they will regret because in three years there will be sessions of a whole day on Quantum Computing and then those of you who stayed you can say I paid attention already in 23 when this was just in the beginning so uh thanks for the introduction yes I'm director of Adia lab which is a new uh research lab it started exactly a year ago go here in Abu Dhabi created by Adia and uh we are here in adgm moved into adgm in August and uh engaged in computational and data research and basic research in application of computational and data science so uh what I would like to talk about is quantum Computing and there are a few messages since I only have 10 minutes minutes that I would like you take away with and I gave you the four messages right there first of all Quantum Computing is using principles of quantum physics is a very different type of computing than what we're all used to from the traditional uh digital Computing and then I say maybe a few things about some of things that are different on quantum computers like the cubits that you may have heard about uh then uh just in this what is the main point here is the promise of quantum Computing is huge and it may take however still many years of research to realize this promise of quantum Computing and as a bonus I give you one important trivia piece of knowledge what you see on the right side that's the picture you usually see when people talk about quantum computers but I disappoint you this is not a quantum computer this is a big and expensive refrigerator it's a refrigerator made out of gold which is produced by this company Finland Blue Force which any single Quantum Computing company that is building his super conducting cubits called of quantum computer needs it to chill the chips down to almost zero degrees so it's beautiful it looks great and it's wonderful and has this Mystique but it's not a computer it's a refrigerator so you can impress your friends and say I've seen a quantum computer just have now you didn't see quum computer just a refrigerator the actual super conducting chips just look like regular almost like regular computer chips so why is quantum Computing so exciting it has a promise in a number of different application areas um it has a very big speed up over classical Computing in certain applications it may be an important tool for Quantum simulation this is important to keep in mind Richard fan who is often credited with having promote Quantum Computing said basically nature is quantum so we should use quantum computers to simulate nature and this is actually probably the most promising physical application is to simulate Quantum systems in chemistry and materials with quantum computers uh there is a big opportunity to use quantum computers to solve optimization problems this is maybe the biggest industrial application and then there are cyber security applications in the positive way is is that in the quantum world you can have unbreakable protocols but you can also use quantum computers to break EX system Quantum security protocols like for example the RSA protocol based on factoring of large integers so quantum computers are built out of cubits Quantum bits and what are cubits very simple this is maybe overly simplistic it's it's over it is overly simplistic but I'll is that you think of a bit in a computer as a two State device that's either on or off so think of it like a light switch that you can turn and off and then in computer science you learn how to use that simple device to do all the calculations a quantum computer has uh a state which is a combination between on and off so you can think of it is but this is not exactly right we I think it as a dial that you can dial between zero and one between on and off uh but to be more a bit more mathematical and that's the only mathematical slide that I'm using this afternoon is is that actually for quantum computer uh the qbit is storing a combination with uh of Zer and one and the combination is with two complex numbers A and B and this is such that the a square plus b square that is the norm of these two common is one and that means that you can think of it not as a linear dial but as a number that is on this so-called block sphere and this is expressed in signs and cosiness so what does it all mean it means that you can actually build a quantum computer with these cuits but the cuits are not the real quantum Essence there are other things that happening entanglement is one which makes for quum computer really work this is a Quantum the rest is just basic linear algebra the power of a quantum computer is coming because of the power of the cubits and you've probably heard that that quantum computers today that have up to 100 cubits and uh quantum computer with 100 cubits can have in C up to two to the 100 different states for example and this means the storage capacity of capability of such a computer is astronomical truly because 2 100 is almost the number of particles in the universe so this is where the big computational Power of the quantum computers are coming now where are we today today uh quantum computers have been proposed in the in the 70s and some first uh big uh proposals were made in the 80s and since the early 2000s companies have been started building quantum computers DW was the first one I remember it was probably 2005 and I had the the honor of being in in their product announcement and now you have many of the big names in Quantum in Computing uh like Google and Microsoft and Intel and IBM are all engaged in half Quantum Computing projects but what's important is what this slide here shows is is that there are many different physics technologies that are used to build uh the cubits and so this is basically a reflection that a quantum computer is still at the stage of a physics experiment and so it's not yet uh yes you can get access to quantum computers but I'd say this is still very early and if you go back in history of digital Computing we are in the equivalent of the 1950s so if you put in 1947 uh the first transistor being built at baps and in the 1950s being the first computers being built and so first business computers were built in the early 60s so we're still if you live a computational history back to back quantum computers are still in a very early experimental age now that being said of course the potential excitement is huge and there has been significant investment both from the big companies and in many uh small startups they all listed here um you can look at the uh American North American companies and the European companies here and the Investments they have received some of them have uh significant several hundreds of millions of dollars of investment received and also the big players like Google IBM and Amazon and Intel have invested significant amount in their inhouse development so there's a lot of money going into Quantum Computing and has created an a lot of additional excitement on top of that uh there's rumor that China has invested of the order of 10 billion also in Quantum Computing uh which is of course always raising for stakes in in North America and in Europe now uh a market research firm and since we're in a finance week I want to show this also is estimating this is from Hyperion which is used to be a sub of IDC is estimating that by 202 five the quantum Computing Market will be about $1.2 billion US now if you are computer scientists that may be a big number but if you keep in mind that the total IT industry is a four trillion dollar industry so that barely scr makes a dent it's not just a little scratch so what's the big hyp about well the big hype about is is that this is uh potentially the application field and so the interesting thing is is that uh everybody has been asked where will quantum computers find their first application and for some reasons so I explain a little later is is f uh Financial is seen as one area where quum computers might find first application have the biggest impact and that's coming ahead of uh Quantum research and cyber security and than chemistry so uh there is significant impact that Quantum Computing can have on our lives and uh the future is uh the potential impact that quantum computers have is is that um they can uh provide uh Solutions potential solutions to problems that have many different uh possible solutions so for example Logistics problems in transportation and a good example of these physes falling under combinatorial optimization problems there's the expectation that Quantum Computing will accelerate machine learning further and you've heard one of the panelists earlier this afternoon being very enthusiastic or concerned about the potential of combining Quantum Computing with AI and machine learning and and then there is this possibility that I pointed out is that quantum computers can accelerate uh chemical simulations and the reason why I think there is excitement is and this is I've been signal to end is fed just the bottom of an S curve where here where there's ferment and uh the as you know technology follows these S curves were before the chat GPT of Quant Computing has arrived it may arrive in the next two or three years so stay tuned for exciting developments and I should be finishing here so I'll end up with my advertisement if I hopefully got you interested and excited about come back here to this wonderful location ADM In This Very Auditorium in January we'll have a conference on Quantum Computing for finance organized jointly with adgm and uh Imperial College London and non young technology University of Technology in Singapore so if you enjoyed ad GM Finance ad Finance week please come back in January and learn more about Quantum Computing for finance thank [Applause] you