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Quantum Computing

Quantum

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss efforts to clone animal species to save them from extinction. In Seoul, Korea, a controversial lab plans to clone endangered animals using a technique called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), in which you extract the nucleus of skin cells from the animal you wish to clone, and then insert them into an egg with its nucleus removed. The lab has successfully used SCNT in their current business, cloning favorite pets who are recently deceased for a high price tag. 

Will cloning help or hurt these endangered species? What is the ultimate purpose and benefits? On The Digital Life, we discuss all this and more.

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On Cloning

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the strange and exciting world of quantum computing. Quantum computers operate on an atomic level, harnessing the power of quantum mechanics to perform processing tasks much more rapidly than computers designed using classical physics. They have the potential to perform calculations much, much faster than any of our silicon-based super computers today — up to 100 million times faster, in fact.

Research in quantum computing has up until recently, been largely theoretical, with the practical technology needed to achieve it beyond reach. But now both Google and D-Wave, a Canadian company, have made some significant progress. Will there be a coming revolution in computing power? Will quantum computers one day replace our silicon chip based computing devices?

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In this episode we explore Quantum Computers, from the basic theory to the potential applications, as well as many myths and misconceptions this groundbreaking technology has accumulated.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/wgCuKTN8sX0

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Music by
Dexter Britain, "Seeing the Future"
Kai Engel, "December"
Lombus, "Hydrogen Sonata"
Koalips, "Kvazar"
Frank Dorittke, "Morninglight"
Brandon Liew, "Into the Storm"

Moore's Law -- putting more and more transistors on a chip -- accelerated the computing industry by so many orders of magnitude, it has (and continues to) achieve seemingly impossible feats. However, we're now resorting to brute-force hacks to keep pushing it beyond its limits and are getting closer to the point of diminishing returns (especially given costly manufacturing infrastructure). Yet this very dynamic is leading to "a Cambrian explosion" in computing capabilities… just look at what's happening today with GPUs, FPGAs, and neuromorphic chips. Through such continuing performance improvements and parallelization, classic computing continues to reshape the modern world.

But we're so focused on making our computers do more that we're not talking enough about what classic computers can't do -- and that's to compute things the way nature does, which operates in quantum mechanics. So our smart machines are really quite dumb, argues Rigetti Computing founder and CEO Chad Rigetti; they're limited to human-made binary code vs. the natural reality of continuous variables. This in turn limits our ability to work on problems that classic computers can't solve, such as key applications in computational chemistry or large-scale optimization for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Which is where quantum computing comes in.

But what is quantum computing, really -- beyond the history and the hype? And where are we in reaching the promise of practical quantum computers? (Hint: it will take a hybrid approach to get there.) Who are the players -- companies, countries, types of people/skills -- working on it, and how can a startup compete in this space? Finally, what will it take to get "the flywheel" of application development and discovery going? Part of the answer comes full circle to the same economic engine that drove previous computing advances, argues Chris Dixon; Moore's Law, after all, is more of an economic principle that combined the forces of capitalism, a critical mass of ideas, and people moving things forward by sheer will. Quantum computing is finally getting pulled into the same economic forces as well.

a16z Podcast: Quantum Computing, Now and Next

A funny thing happened on the way to quantum computing: Unlike other major shifts in classic computing before it, it begins -- not ends -- with The Cloud. That's because quantum computers today are more like "physics experiments in a can" that most companies can't use yet -- unless you use software, not just as cloud infrastructure for accessing this computing power commercially but for also building the killer app on top of it. What will that killer app be? With quantum virtual machines and special languages for connecting and trading off classic and quantum computing, companies and developers may be able to help figure that out, not to mention get ahead of this next computing platform (before it surprises them).

Ok, sounds great. Only the old rules don't all apply: You have to fundamentally rethink algorithms for quantum computing, just as with previous waves of high-performance computing before it -- from CPU to GPU to TPU and now to QPU. Because as chips evolve, so do algorithms, and vice versa, in an iterative way. But the chicken-egg question of which came first (the algorithm or the specialized hardware for running it?) doesn't matter as much because the answer itself involves herding chickens: "You're trying to get all of these independent processes to run and cooperate with each other to produce an answer and do so in a way that was faster" than the other way before it, observes Jeff Cordova, interim head of software engineering at quantum computing startup Rigetti Computing. "In hindsight, we really care about the statistical model, not watching the entire movie", shares general partner Vijay Pande, based on his own experiences in the world of high-performance computing.

In this episode of the a16z Podcast (in conversation with Sonal Chokshi), Cordova and Pande talk all about the realities of engineering -- and using -- the next computing platform beyond scientific research and hardening it into practical, commercial, industrial-scale reality. Luckily, the cloud provides a map to get us there, today.

a16z Podcast: The Cloud Atlas to Real Quantum Computing

Speaker(s): Jorn Lyseggen | The Internet has changed the way we make decisions, but the way executives make decisions hasn't changed at all. Board members focus on internal data when every day competitors are leaving behind online breadcrumbs filled with valuable external data. This could be a job advert, filing a new patent, launching a new product, social media and more. Using insights gleaned from this data will help companies to look ahead and make more informed decisions. In this lecture, Jorn Lyseggen will talk about his new book Outside Insight, which includes case studies of the success and failures of international companies including Nike, Volvo, L’Oreal, Manchester United, the World Wide Fund for Nature, as well as the Obama 2012 campaign. Jorn Lyseggen (@jorn_lyseggen) is the CEO of Meltwater: a company that develops and markets media monitoring and business intelligence software. The company was founded in 2002 in a shack in Norway with just $15,000 start-up money. Now, Meltwater employs more than 1,000 people in 60 offices across six continents, and has over 23,000 clients across the world. The company has won various awards and Jorn also founded the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, a training programme and seed fund for African entrepreneurs. Kenneth Benoit is Professor of Quantative Social Research Methods and Head of the Department of Methodology at LSE. SEDS (@SEDS_LSE) is an interdisciplinary research unit established to foster the study of data science and new forms of data with a focus on its social, economic, and political aspects. SEDS aims to host, facilitate, and promote research in social and economic data science.  SEDS is a collaboration between the Departments of Statistics, Methodology and Mathematics.

Outside Insight: navigating a world drowning in data [Audio]

Quantum computation could hold the key to being able to simulate matter exactly. This week we have an extended interview with Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik, from Harvard University, to find out what a quantum computer is, how it works and how it can be used in chemistry.

Links:
- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00550 (The Matter Simulation (R)evolution)

Credits:
- Support: TMCS, EPSRC
- Theme music: from "Earnest's Understanding" © 2017 Charles Ormrod

Prof. Ahmed Banafa  I Named the No. 1 Top Voice To Follow in Tech by LinkedInOne, Prof. Ahmed Banafa of San Jose State University, one of the top IoT writers, speakers and thought leaders, with research published on Forbes, MIT Technology Review, ComputerWorld, Techonomy, he is a contributor to IEEE-IoT, LinkedIn, IBMCloud, IBM Big Data Analytics Hub, HPE Insights and he has appeared as an expert in new tech with appearances on ABC, NBC , CBS, FOX and other media outlets.  Our conversation covered a lot of ground, focusing on IoT from the perspectives of Technology, business and society.  We discussed the different dynamics at play across consumer and enterprise technology, the regulatory backdrop, and the evolving demands around security safety and privacy.  Banafa weaves in broad perspective on the dynamics of the IoT industry and provides details insights into the power of AI and Machine Learning as well as Blockchain technology.  Looking forward he sees the rise of quantum computing as one of the most consequential innovations ahead of us.

#11 The Rise of Quantum Computing - Prof. Ahmed Banafa

The Digital Life http://www.thedigitalife.com is an online radio show that explores important, timely topics in the world of design and emerging technologies like genomics, robotics, and the Internet of Things.

The show is created by GoInvo http://www.goinvo.com, a studio designing the future of healthcare, whose clients include market leaders like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Walgreens, as well as micro startups that will create the markets of the future.

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Quantum Computing

The Digital Life Podcast