Digest opened free editor
Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence has put on the technology industry, another potential idea – quantum computing – in the shade. It is difficult to focus on the distant and unconfirmed benefits of quantum machines when the rush dominates the main headlines.
This is more than just the issue of perception, though. According to two of the leading numbers in artificial intelligence, quantum computing can be much further, much less important, from many people who work in this field such as claim.
Their comments forced the quantum computing industry on a defensive narration and the revival of a question that was difficult to get rid of: Where is the line between noise and the reality of supposed technology that is changing globally that has not yet produced anything of a practical value?
This year, the CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang expected that useful quantum computers are still 20 years away – much longer than companies working in the field claim. HUANG is working closely with many quantum companies, including CUDA air conditioning to help researchers create quantum simulation. This did not prevent his comments from hitting the shares of companies circulating publicly.
The least dramatic in the reaction it causes, but it is likely to have more importance, is the proposal of Dimis Hasabis, CEO and co -founder of GooglepeMind, that artificial intelligence.
One of the largest hopes of quantum machines is that it will be able to design molecular activity in much more details than traditional or “classic” computers, at all. It can pave the way for new pharmaceutical preparations or battery technologies. According to Hassabis, the artificial intelligence that works on computers today already proves skilled in complex systems modeling and can handle this type of work.
It is not surprising that these comments have brought a quick response from the quantum crowd. Hartmut Neven, the head of Google's quantum voltage, said this week that he was confident that “the real world's applications are only on quantum computers” will arrive within five years. Exactly what shape this will take is unclear.
The great bet of Google was on the full quantity devices that bear mistakes that could exceed classic computers. Late last year, he showed that he was able to overcome the “noise” that accumulates in quantum systems as a result of the inherent instability of its basic components, known as Qubits – an important step as it tries to expand its scope to produce a practical system.
Nevertheless, the hopes of industry are based on what is known as NISQ-noisy, and medium-scale. These can only deal with the summary quantum accounts before the noise is overwhelmed, but it may still be harnessed to produce something useful. Neven's claim coincided with the publication of Google Research in the nature that defines a new technology that may make the NISQ simulations more practical.
However, supporters of NISQ systems have claimed for years close to penetration. Until they can show useful computing tasks that can never be treated on a classic machine, doubts will remain.
But reckless progress of artificial intelligence may have opened new ways of quantum computing. Quantinuum – which was formed from the merging of the HoneyWell quantum arm with quantum Cambridge in the UK – revealed this week a way to use its quantum machines to create additional data to train large language models that support a lot of artificial intelligence today.
According to the CEO Raj Hazra, nature simulation at the molecular level within a quantum computer produces data that cannot be created in any other way. He adds that this may be valuable for companies looking to train artificial intelligence models to discover drugs or research in new substances. But it has not been proven that this would lead to a meaningful progress on classical computing.
Quantinuum also indicates a wider point about the reaction of quantum computing and AI: that the borders between the two fields turn with both the development of both. It seems that it is likely that the two technologies will work alongside each other, as each of them is in appropriate computing works.
As artificial intelligence advances at a break, and with quantum computing more than reality, how the two marriage will work is difficult to predict.
