Gen AI Has Already Taken the World by Storm. Just Wait Until It Gets a Quantum Boost

May 13, 2024, Time Magazine

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When Lawrence Gasman was looking for a PhD topic back in the 1970s, computing labs were already abuzz with smart people proposing clever studies in artificial intelligence. “But the problem was we had nothing to run them on,” he says. “The processors needed just didn’t exist.”

It took half a century for computing power to catch up with AI’s potential. Today, thanks to hi-powered chips such as GPUs from California-based Nvidia, generative artificial intelligence, or Gen AI, is revolutionizing the way we work, study, and consume entertainment, empowering people to create bespoke articles, images, videos, and music in the blink of an eye. The technology has spawned a bevy of competing consumer apps offering enhanced voice recognition, graphic design, and even coding.

Now AI stands poised to get another boost from a radical new form of computing: quantum. “Quantum could potentially do some really remarkable things with AI,” says Gasman, founder of Inside Quantum Technology.

Rather than relying on traditional computing’s binary “bits”—switches denoted as 1s and 0s—quantum use multivariant “qubits” that exist in some percentage of both states simultaneously, akin to a coin spinning in midair. The result is exponentially boosted computing power as well as an enhanced ability to intuitively mimic natural processes that rarely conform to a binary form.

Whereas Gen AI’s consumer-targeted applications have made its impact more widespread and immediate, quantum is more geared towards industry, meaning several recent milestones have slipped under the radar. However, they stand to potentially turbocharge the AI revolution.

“Generative AI is one of the best things that has happened to quantum computing,” says Raj Hazra, CEO of Colorado-based quantum start-up Quantinuum. “And quantum computing is one of the best things to happen to the advance of generative AI. They are two perfect partners.”

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