The Race For Quantum Supremacy

at our current technological pace our ability to continue to make ever faster and smaller computer chips is slowing today researchers think that the next big scientific leap could involve one of the most powerful and mysterious forces in nature quantum physics now what would take years for current computers to do a quantum computer could achieve in just a few moments promising profound leaps and everything from medicine communications and space travel to an understanding of human consciousness itself while labs all over the world are racing to create the first commercially viable quantum computers fundamental questions remain about how this technology could be used or misused going forward so he sent Taylor Wilson to investigate [Music] one more set of gloves and your safety glasses safety glasses thank you so what we do here is we try to imagine what the future will look like and our goal here is to push the envelope to get ahead of the technology curve so to speak so that we're ready for what the future brings the future will usher in the age of the quantum computer a device using quantum physics to create a computer with the possibility of 1 million times more processing stream than all computers in the world today combined my cell phone has a classical computer show and that's produces a computer code that's made up of bits so ones or zeros how does a quantum bit or a qubit differ than that just one in zero imagine this coin is a bit of an unconventional computer so you see this side of the coin is a 1 this side of the coin is not a 1 a conventional computer basically flips bits yeah to do a calculation yes the larger the calculation the more bits you need you that means bits are a classical computers building blocks individual data units represented as a 0 or a 1 that allow computers to display numbers texts images and sounds but a quantum computer is different a quantum computer or qubit it's a combination of heads or tails okay and you can you can visualize it by thinking of spinning we call it superposition when you go below the atomic level and into the quantum realm the physics are in many ways wildly different from what we perceive one of those unique principles is superposition and that's what computer makers are trying to harness in a quantum computer the quantum bit or qubit uses this principle of superposition to be both a 0 and a 1 at the same time effectively multitasking and that's part of what makes a qubit so powerful classical computers run one calculation at a time but a computer that utilizes quantum effects could run through several calculations simultaneously at three hundred qubits you can you code more information than all of the atoms in the universe Wow Wow if we only had to make individual qubits work we'd basically be done yeah the fact that we have to make them all work simultaneously that's what makes this a really hard hard problem the engineering needed to harness that kind of power known as quantum supremacy has set off a race among computer Giants to get the first fully functional quantum computer and while a commercially viable quantum computer is likely still years away the first computing device to tap into quantum principles called the d-wave is now being used by the United States biggest defense contractor Lockheed Martin [Music] we are looking at the very hardest problems the problems that are intractable we say for classical computers which just means that we can't solve them with the amount of time and resources that we have problems that would take on the age of the universe or something to compute exactly senior quantum engineer dr. Kristin puddin's has used the d-wave to ensure that some of Lockheed Martin's weapon systems are error-free advanced weapon systems are using increasingly more complex software like the f-35 which runs on more than eight million lines of code the software verification problem is something that's particularly difficult it's something that consumes a huge amount of resources for Lockheed Martin and for really every other company that's developing systems with computers inside it costs a lot of money costs an incredible amount of money if we could speed it up even a fraction of a percent we would probably pay for the entire quantum computing program and so while the race to be the first to build a commercially viable quantum computer it's a fever pitch an entirely new computer language is being written to program these powerful machines [Music] so once we have quantum hardware that actually works you're working on how to code it and how to be ready for that hardware yeah exactly christos aboard and her team at Microsoft are figuring out exactly how to put the power of a quantum computer to use once a breakthrough is achieved so how many qubits can this software kind of simulate you can simulate roughly 30 to 32 qubits okay but if we go larger let's say we wanted to simulate two hundred and fifty cubits okay on this device it doesn't sound like a very big number but that will take you the age of the universe to do one operation let's say we want to understand you know how do the electrons configure in a hydrogen yes I'm sorry in that structure we're gonna run the chemistry solution and there's a lot of numbers flying by this simulator mimics a quantum computer only much slower a real quantum computer will be able to solve some of the most complex science and engineering problems almost instantaneously effectively condensing years worth of manual laboratory testing to just a few moments and that might reshape our world to look a little bit more like the worlds of science fiction if we can take you know knowledge like this we can feed that in two ways to actually engineer new materials you know imagine a new paint that could make a plane disappear you know from from signals right from from your visible eye when we think about how do we transport power right across say the United States Phoenix is really sunny a lot of the time I live in Seattle not so sunny a lot of the time maybe we could transport solar power really efficiently from Phoenix to Seattle you want to do drug design you want to better produce fertilizer you want to find a high temperature superconductor or interesting materials it's not just a step in computing power this is a a quantum leap in terms of computing power absolutely and while this leaping computing power opens the door to amazing science like any new technology it also introduces problems that we have not yet imagined or potentially intensifies dangers we already face cyber chaos this morning chances are some of your personal or financial information was compromised Russia launched a sophisticated cyberattack against the Pentagon in the last five years alone hackers breached billions of accounts and systems worldwide these attacks were all done with the classical computers we use today because of a quantum computer speed and power there are no current security methods we employ that could fully protect our bank's identities and even our infrastructure the irony is that a country lightly accused of hacking intellectual property is now leading the world in creating its own impenetrable quantum technology for cyber security [Music] for the first revolution for information technology China the follower so the country start to think about trying something new so that maybe in the future we can be an leader so that's the beginning of the whole story at the University of Science and Technology of China dr. pangaean way known in China as the father of quantum has created the first secure quantum communications network as a first step in countering the threat that actual quantum computers will pose so here is a control center for our quantum science satellite this is the first one of satellite in existence right so the orbit is about 500 kilometer junit just take is very basically through how this process works so so it's quite simple we send a sequence of single photon yes Sam we tried for phone and the measurement onto the receiver photon they also we need to compare a subsequence of the general key okay to find out whether we have some error rate so so it's quite simple but not really the scientists are exploiting a principle of quantum physics called entanglement a concept so strange that Albert Einstein even called it spooky entangled photons are essentially leaked across time and space and can instantly teleport their quantum information with each other over incredibly large distances [Music] and so it's looking the phone I so what pans team is doing is linking or untangling particles to create a completely safe communication channel between two locations on earth and a satellite using a laser to entangled particles are used to create a key to secure a conversation and because of how fragile keeping a quantum connection is if a hacker listens in on that conversation the connection between the entangled photons will fall apart and the network will close so the information is actually going through this teleconference is actually being encrypted through the the quantum information system right exactly if we visualize someone are performing and even jokingly then we can go to another optical fiber and we can continue our secure video conference but encrypted communication is just one quantum application pangaean way is pursuing China will be spending at least 10 billion dollars over the next three years on quantum technology including computing around 13 times more than the US government is spinning on quantum research although we don't know and what is the physics behind quantum penguin but we do know it exists so therefore it doesn't matter we can steal you such a phenomenon for useful application and unraveling the strange nature of quantum mechanics might even take us beyond inventing new incredible technologies it might also play a key part and unlocking one of the greatest questions humanity has ever asked what is the nature of human consciousness I see its ultimate goal we want to do is we want to understand our brain right how our brain work consciousness is somewhat related to quantum mechanics only condom mechanics in some sense give us some room for uncertainty which is somewhere could relate to free well or consciousness a computer like this but actually give an answer to it maybe in long-term goal can give us answer where is the origin of consciousness that's what we are looking for you

Channel: VICE News

Views: 2,380,498

Rating: 4.8671422 out of 5

Keywords: quantum supremacy, quantum computer, VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, vice news 2019, taylor wilson, news, google quantum computer 2019, taylor wilson vice, quantum computing, laws of quantum mechanics, technology, artificial intelligence, cyber security, microsoft quantum computing, microsoft quantum developer kit, quibits, quibit google, google quantum computing, google quantum processor, intel quad core, intel quantum processor, mike mayberry

Id: 1lIfbqfoGMo

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019

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For those curious: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/quantum-computing/

I had no idea we were this close to achieving the next quantum step in human evolution. If the United States fails to lead in this next chapter of human advancement the world will feel it. We will feel it. Most of us can't grasp the power of these machines, but Yang understands the vitality of this technology.

A Quantum Computer can bring down an unprepared electrical grid, stock market, and certain vital infrastructure in a couple hours. Why is a Communist nation leading the way in Quantum Computing?