WEBVTT - From Q*bert to Qubits 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.760 Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.000 the podcast that look at the future and says I'm 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.960 making a note here huge success. I'm Jonathan Stricklandon, I'm 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.640 Lauren Bock Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And guys, you know, 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.560 I have this problem. I was using my computer the 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.880 other day to work on a non trivial math problem, 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:34.879 and it gave me an estimated time of completing that 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.400 particular task as four hundred and seventy eight years, and 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.000 I've got plans that day. I'm actually washing my hair. 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.520 So I was hoping that maybe we could talk about 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.200 classical computers, how they process information, and maybe why you're 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.040 still washing your hair and your cyborg body and years 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.080 years his cyborg body has hair. Yeah, it actually it 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:03.240 takes to wash only my body has hair. But yes, 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.240 it's uh, it's you know, let's not I don't want 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.080 to go too far into my personal details here, so 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:14.600 we all understand classical computers are reading machine language, binary language, 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.559 zeros and ones. Technically there's actually something electronic going on there, 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.679 but we're specifically saying that you know, it interprets information 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:27.399 in sequences of zeros and ones that represent other things. Yeah, 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.800 any piece of software running on your computer is actually 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.679 a really long, I'm generally really long sequence of on 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.720 and off switches of ones and zeros, right, and it's 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.200 following specific rules. Yeah, and so there are two options 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.679 as to work with. It has on and off their 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:48.480 own one or one and zero whatever. On and off 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.120 would be one in zero um. And everything that it 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.400 does has to be translated down to that level before 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.920 the hardware can make use of it, right, because the 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:02.120 hardware doesn't understand things like run Assassin's Creed four. It 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.559 actually has to break it down into understands one zero 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:09.639 one one. Right. But if you tell it that run 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:14.359 equals one zero zero zero one one one, right, Yeah, 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.600 if you establish what the rules are, then it can 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:21.120 it can interpret it through multiple levels of translating from 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:25.600 whatever language you're using into machine language that that binary system. 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.480 So these sort of this sort of approach is really 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.960 good for certain types of operations. For example, if you 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.000 want something just really simple, like you want to multiply 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:40.080 one number by another number, and you input then too 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.239 the computer and it understands what the operation is understands 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.200 how to multiply then, and by understand I mean it 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:50.880 has the instructions to do so, not that it actually comprehends. Yeah, 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.200 you can listen to our artificial intelligence episode and hear 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.399 that whole argument again. But the the idea of being 0:02:57.440 --> 0:02:59.400 that it does that very well. It can do that 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.639 operation quickly, you get it. You know, if you use 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.280 a calculator, you're going to get that information very quickly. 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:08.480 That's first computer, more quickly than a human being, certainly 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.800 than most most human beings. Yes. Yeah, your classic computer 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:13.800 is very good at math, and it's very good at 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:16.840 doing lots and lots of math problems way faster than 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:18.600 you can. But if it needs to do a whole 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.520 series of those in order to get the one results 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.960 you want, because the question you're asking is actually going 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.600 to require many, many, many operations before you can get 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.960 an answer, that's where the classical computers start to slow down. 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.880 Even when we're talking about modern classical computers, which often 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.280 have multi cores, right, you know, you'll hear about these 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.720 multi core processors. They can break down certain types of 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:46.040 problems into parallel chunks, and each core of the processor 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.040 can work on a chunk of that problem, which cuts 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.480 down on the amount of time it takes to solve 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.240 the overall question that you've asked. But even then it's 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.119 you know, you're talking like like maybe sixteen cores. That's 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:02.720 still nothing if you're talking about a truly difficult problem. 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.040 And that's that's traditionally where we run into a barrier 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.240 with classical computers. There are certain types of non trivial 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.320 problems that classical computers have trouble solving. And here's an 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.479 example we've talked about before, the traveling salesman problem. You know, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:18.680 the idea that you've got a traveling salesman who needs 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.160 to visit let's say ten cities, and your job is 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:24.599 to try and find the most efficient route for that 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.880 traveling salesman to go through to spend the least amount 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.080 of energy on this trip. And there are a lot 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.120 of different potential wants to choose from, you know, choosing 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.359 city A first and then going to city D and 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:39.719 then going back to CITYB, or going straight through, and 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.240 really you don't know what the right answer is until 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.840 you've compared all those options. And as you add cities 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.480 to this this question, it becomes more and more difficult 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.360 to answer, and a classical computer essentially what it has 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.480 to do is go through and run every single possibility 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:58.360 and then at the end of running all of them, 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.160 compare all the results to other to come up with 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:06.080 your answer, which can take a long time. So that 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.840 means that we need to look at maybe an alternative 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.279 to classical computing if we want to be able to 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:15.080 solve those types of problems in a more efficient, faster manner. 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.360 But how do we get more efficient than than a bit? 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.159 I mean, on or off seems like a pretty pretty 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.520 simplified What if you could be both on and off 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:28.880 at the same time? That's crazy talk. It is crazy talk, Jonathan. Yes, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.440 I have never seen a light switch that was both 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:35.200 off and on at the same time. No wonder you 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:36.920 haven't seen it. If you had observed it, it it would 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.279 either be off or on. Yeah, can't. You can't see 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:42.359 it and see it that it's both off and on 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:44.640 at the same time, then you've observed it. Well. The 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.400 problem is because the light switch is actually a really 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.320 huge thing. Yeah, it's a macro level thing. It's on 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:56.720 our scales, um, so it's position tends to be pretty stable, right, Yeah, 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.640 But if we're looking at things on say a quantum 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.520 ski ill that's sub atomic, tiny world where things just 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.880 don't make sense an electronic Yeah, we're talking like tiny 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:11.240 little particles. They exhibit behaviors that if if that same 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:16.080 behavior were to suddenly exhibit itself on the on the 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.840 on the macro scale, on our scale, we would all 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.360 just think that we had been sucked into some sort 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:26.320 of David Lynch weird al. Yeah, would make sense. No, 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.839 nothing would make sense, because the quantum world and the 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:32.880 classical world are are very different in the way they behave. Well, yeah, 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.640 our our intuitions are evolved to deal with you know, 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:41.960 like trees and rocks and animals, nothings, superpositions and in 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:44.400 further more, trees and rocks and animals that don't suddenly 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:48.200 shift three miles to the right for no apparent reason. Okay, 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.200 so what what are we talking about? How can something 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.800 be in two positions at once? It is called superposition, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.359 And asking me how is the wrong way to go 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.919 about a joe, because I certainly could not tell you 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:03.360 how I can tell you what's going on here. So 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.280 super position is a concept within the field of quantum engineering, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.600 quantum mechanics, where a sub atomic particle is able to 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.280 coexist in multiple states at the same time. And they 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:18.560 don't mean states like the United States. I'm talking about 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.000 actual states of being. So, for example, with electron, we 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.640 often talk about spin, Like let's say that it could 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.080 either have a spin that's up or spin that's down, 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:31.680 and that's going to determine its magnetic field as well. Right, 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.040 the direction of its magnetic field is that will be 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:38.760 determined by this electron spin. Now, on the quantum level, technically, 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.280 an electron can be in superposition, meaning that can inhabit 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.840 both an upspin and a downspin at the same time. 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.000 It has a probability of being in either one or 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.000 the other at any given moment, were you to observe 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:54.160 that electron and therefore lock it into that one one 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.680 state or the exactly, So, if you were to observe 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.080 the electron, the electron would then suddenly in have but 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.840 just one of those two states, and that would be 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.320 determined by the probability of which state it was most 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:08.480 likely to be in. Sometimes it's going to be in 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.160 the less likely state. That's why they're probabilities. Right, it 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.520 might be a chance that will be a spin down 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.400 and a six chance of spin up and you observe 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.920 it and it's spin down. That can still happen because 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.600 as long as the probability exists, that's how things can 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:25.720 sometimes shake out. Now, if you were to do that 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.640 same sort of experiment over a really long run, then 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.679 the probabilities would start to manifest themselves, assuming that everything 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:38.360 else was identical, which would never happen. But anyway, superposition 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.960 is that crazy idea that a sub atomic particle can 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:45.080 exist in both of these states at the same time, 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:47.440 at least until you observe them, at which point, once 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:51.040 you observe them, you would say that the system decoheres. 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.959 That's it's an idea where a quantum system is a 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.360 very delicate thing and if you interfere with it in 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:00.600 any way, if you try to interact with it in 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:04.000 various ways, it will decohere and become a classical system 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.760 where things behave more the way we would expect them 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:11.040 to based upon our own experiences. In terms of thought experiments. 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:12.520 This is kind of going back to if you've heard 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.559 about it Stronger's cat, It's it's it's you know, poking 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.240 the system and seeing, you know, trying to identify what 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.600 a particle is doing is going to make the cat either. Yeah. 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.280 So the basic Strodinger's cat thought experiment is that you've 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.040 got a box with uh, some sort of castor in 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.160 it that is going to that could release a poisonous 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:35.880 gas anytime after thirty minutes have passed. So you've got 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.199 a cat inside this box with the cast of poisonous gas, 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.079 and you wait for thirty one minutes to pass. And 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.520 at that at thirty one minutes, there's a fifty percent 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:46.760 chance that the castors released the gas and a fifty 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.640 percent chance that it hasn't, which means at that moment, 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.199 before you open up the box and observe it technically 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.040 from a quantum level, the cat is fifty percent alive 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.320 and fifty dead. And then once you observe it it 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.600 those those uh that quantum state deco here's and it 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.880 forms a classical state. Right. Of course, the idea of 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.040 Schrodinger's cat was first introduced a sort of like a 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.000 reductio out of serdum. The idea was like, this is 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:14.200 so ridiculous, exactly, yeah, but it turns out like works. 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.160 Quantum physicists were like, well that's tough, you know, Yeah, 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:19.760 on the On the macro scale, of course, it's ridiculous. 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:21.400 You know, you would never say that the cat is 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.120 both alive and dead at the same time. It's either 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:26.280 one or the other. And because you open up the 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.920 box doesn't change that at all. But on the quantum 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.760 scale it certainly does matter. Okay, But so if if 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.040 this is how does this relate to quantum computing? Are 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.560 we giving the cat a bunch of buttons to push? 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.439 The cats and quantum computing? Lauren, I don't know where 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.840 you got your notes, but let's just without cats. I 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.720 think is a really sad. I think computers are made 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.719 entirely of cats. Internet is made of cats, not computers. 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:52.760 Uh no, no, no, we're going to We're going to 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:54.839 back off the cats and the Internet and the quantum 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.760 computing for just a second. There's one other there's one 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.560 other concept of quantum that we have to cover, which 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.080 is entanglement. Yeah. This is the idea of where you 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:07.520 have multiple sub atomic particles that are entangled in some 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.319 quantum way. So remember when I was talking about the 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.920 spin of the electron being either up or down. If 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.720 you have two entangled electrons, those electrons are going to 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.520 be kind of opposite but mirror images of one another, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.080 and that if you know the behavior of one, you 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.920 know what the behavior of the other one was at 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.920 that moment when you observed the first one. Knowing that 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.800 from that moment forward, you can't really predict anything, but 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.760 being that if if two electrons are entangled and one 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.079 is spinning up, the other one would be spinning down. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.840 For that, for that particular set of features, that's not 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.560 just limited to spin. There are other things we have 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.440 to take into consideration, but that goes well beyond just 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.559 the basic idea of entanglement. Entanglements very important with this 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:58.560 when it gets to quantum computing, the concepts of superposition, entanglement, 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:03.440 and coherence are all really really important. So you asked, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:07.559 you know about quantum computing. That's that's the where we're 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.240 getting at. The idea of quantum computing is being able 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.400 to harness these features of the quantum world in a 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.480 way that can do compute computational work for us and UH. 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:19.679 And the the base unit of that. You know, if 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:21.959 you were to say the base unit of a computer 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:24.920 is the bit, either a zero or a one. The 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:28.679 base unit for a quantum computer is the cubit, which 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:31.360 I had to be reminded, is not a little orange 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.920 guy who bounces around the pyramid. Okay, so instead of 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:41.240 a silicon microprocessors, say, you would have computational activities being 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.960 done by something like a photon or an electron or 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:50.360 preferably lots of them. We need at least two. But um, 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.200 although I guess I know you need at least two. 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:55.640 So what the cubits are? Uh? Interesting in that if 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:57.520 a bit a bit can only be a zero or 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.040 a one, it's one or the other. It gives you 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.520 a single value. Yes, cubits are both zeros and ones 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.960 at the same time superposition uh, and technically all values 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.440 in between, although that's not really that important. So the 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:13.760 interesting thing about cubits is that the the relationship between 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.520 cubits and computing power is exponential. You take two to 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:21.600 the power of however many number of cubits you have, 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.199 and that is the equivalent of your quantum computer's power, 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:31.720 meaning that with with you know, two um cubit's you 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.240 have four potential values. There. Uh. You have to look 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.600 at the things as like, uh, two zeros zero, one 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.840 one zero or one one um and they're all the 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:43.719 same things, and there are all of those at the 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.199 same time, right, But if you were to add another 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.160 cupid in there, then you're talking about two to the 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:53.439 third power. So you're talking about eight pieces of information 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.360 from three cubits, which is different from the way it 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:58.760 would be if it were just bits. And as you 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.959 add cubits it becomes exponentially more powerful. By definition, you're 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:06.640 talking about actual exponent here the inn in that two 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:10.800 to the nth power. So the interesting thing here is 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.840 that all of these different cubits could uh and inhabit 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:17.520 these two values of zero and one at the same time. 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.400 If you have enough of them, then you could, in theory, 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.800 run a very complex problem through a quantum computer and 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.600 it could solve for all aspects of that problem simultaneously 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:32.000 in parallel because it's essentially doing all of those calculations 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.800 at once because all of the cubits are all possible values. 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.880 So it's kind of uh great for very specific types 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:45.640 of difficult problems. Okay, so this sounds like, though, um, 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.280 it's not going to be a replacement for the kinds 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.880 of computers we use now, not at all. Because while 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.680 it's great for certain complex problems like the traveling salesman 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.160 problem where it could solve for all of those different 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:04.760 variations simultaneously. It's not necessarily going to be any faster, 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.520 and in fact, might even be slower than a classical 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:12.400 computer for your basic computing functions that that regular schmos 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:14.800 like like myself, like like I do. If it's not 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.880 gonna show YouTube super faster, you're not going to be 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.480 able to run the latest video game even faster, like 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:23.480 I love the idea of running a video game on 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.120 a quantum computer and all possible outcomes of the video 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:30.080 gameplayouts simultaneously, like I was both good and evil and 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.400 everything in between. But that's that's not exactly what would happen. Okay, 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.280 So you're saying that a machine like this might have 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:41.000 really incredible powers in some kind of specialized way, very specialized, 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:46.000 like cryptography breaking. If if we had a working quantum 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:50.880 computer of sufficient power, cryptography as it exists now would 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.920 be meaningless. And the reason for that is that basically 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:58.560 the way cryptography tends to work is take two really 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.240 large prime numbers, like really really large. We're talking digits 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.680 that are hundreds of digits long, like it's it's an 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.840 enormous number, and then you find another enormous prime number, 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:09.320 and you multiply the two of them together and you 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:14.880 get that product, and then your your encryption is based 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.720 upon a party that's authorized having one of those two 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.560 large prime numbers, and as long as it's one of 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.760 the two right to correct numbers, they can get access 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.160 to that uh, that particular information or site or whatever. 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:33.280 I'm oversimplifying for the purpose of this podcast. Now, publicly, 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:36.320 all you can see is the product. So you see 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.400 this huge product. I mean, it's a no enormous number. 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.440 I remember, it's the product of two big prime numbers. 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:46.360 And if you don't have the information already, trying to 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:49.760 figure out which two prime numbers made this even bigger 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.200 number is really hard to do. In a way a 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.560 classical computer would do it, is it would start by 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.520 dividing by prime numbers and then run through all of 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:02.720 the prime numbers that possibly could be. So, if you're talking, 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.720 if you pick a large enough prime number, that alone 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.639 is going to guarantee that any computer working on trying 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.760 to force this cryptography, this brute force stile attack is 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.119 going to take longer than it would be you know, 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.480 feasible to run. So you would you know, most people 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:20.920 would not ever bother to try, because to do so 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:24.000 successfully would take forever. But if you had a quantum 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:28.400 computer that could solve for all potential prime numbers at 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:33.639 the same time, you could crack that roll relatively quickly. 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.320 In fact, yeah, it could. It can make the most 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:41.359 advanced encryption tools useless. It could also usher in a 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.359 new era of quantum cryptography, which would be even more 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.960 difficult to crack. But you know, it's it's one of 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.679 those things already where that's just one application. Obviously, there 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.399 are lots of other applications for quantum computing. Yeah, that 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.359 was one of the early applications. Actually, in the in 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.040 the early nineties, Peter Shore of Bell Labs developed a 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.800 quantum algorithm that that was a method of of entangling 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.800 cubits and using superposition to um to find prime factors 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.280 of an integer. Although that's not to say that that 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.280 we can run that on all of our fancy current 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.440 quantum computers. It was really like a proof of concepts 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:17.840 saying that once we are able to do this, it's 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:19.960 going to change our world, and it's good to know 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:23.920 about it now rather than three months after the world's 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:26.320 fastest quantum computer is made, and then we all realize 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.520 all of our stuff is public. It's better to know 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:32.000 it now, so we can say, huh, that's a problem. 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.920 How do we fix this? So I mean, but yeah, 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:38.159 it's a great example, and a lot of work has 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.840 been done on quantum computers since just that that that 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.120 algorithm was really for a hypothetical quantum computer. But now 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.760 we've got people who have actually built at least preliminary 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:51.400 quantum computers. Yeah, what's out there? I think I think 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:53.320 the fanciest one that we've got was built in two 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.919 thousand and seven. It's it's called the d Wave and 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.200 it's a sixteen cubit quantum computer. I know they were 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.119 working on one that would have been five and twenty 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.479 eight cubits, which would have been phenomenal, and that that 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.840 would have been unveiled within the last year or two, 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:13.000 But I honestly don't know if they ever uh successfully 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:16.160 demonstrated that one. But the fact that we've had people 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.200 demonstrate this at all is pretty phenomenal because keep in mind, 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.760 you have to be really careful with the way you 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:24.919 operate one of these things, because just by observing it, 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.200 by by trying to interpret the results you could cause decoherence, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:31.760 and then you end up with a very primitive classical 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.679 computer that can't do much of anything, Like can you 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.600 imagine going from a sixteen cubit computer to a sixteen 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.640 bit computer? Would not be great? Right, And they've been 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:45.679 working on these kinds of problems for UM since the 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.119 since the sixties and seventies and eighties when all of 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.280 this was sort of starting to come together, and it 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.040 required a lot of work in UM and first of all, 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:57.680 bringing reversible logic gates into the computing world, which which 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.520 allows you if you have a one way gate, then 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:02.800 you're going to experience a lot of data and therefore 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.000 heat loss in your computer system. UM having a reversible 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.080 gate lets you UM basically not burn out your processor 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:13.440 every time you turn it on. Essentially, UM and and 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:18.720 quantum electrodynamics, which is just starting to hum look at 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:21.520 how electrons and photons interact with each other, so that 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:24.920 we can start creating these little quantum pieces of of 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:27.840 electrical information, right right, yeah, I mean, how do you 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.679 harness this stuff? It's it's really tricky. Are you have 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:35.880 to be able to create entangled particles? That's already kind 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:38.640 of tricky there's certain minty materials that are being used 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.400 right now in an experimental way that that are potentially 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.480 a source of entangled photons. That's pretty exciting stuff. You 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.560 have to figure out how to create a system that 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.520 these can work in that is not going to allow 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.959 it to go into decoherence. You have to figure out 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.120 how to program for it so again that you can 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.280 take advantage of it using it for the right sort 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:02.080 of problems, and you have to figure out how to 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:06.560 get the solution out of it again without disturbing the system, 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:09.280 which is pretty tricky stuff. And even then, you're talking 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.919 about probabilistic results, right, you mean you're getting results that 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:18.239 are assigned certain probabilities of being correct versus incorrect. And 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.920 sometimes the probabilities you get are so high that you 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:24.919 might as well say it's a certainty. I mean, you 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.880 can't really say that statistically speaking, there's always some room 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:33.400 for uncertainty, but you know from human experience and be like, well, 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:39.359 you know, times out of a hundred it's right, but 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:41.520 there's still a chance that could be wrong and not 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:43.800 all and of course some results may end up being 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.840 like we're sure this is the right answer, So it's 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.280 a it's a very uh specific, kind of niche oriented 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.520 version of computing. It's not something you're not gonna go 0:21:54.560 --> 0:21:58.399 and get your uh your your your laptop. That's gonna 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.840 have you know, the cotum version of the last model 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:04.720 you owned, right, sure, and it is it is. Yeah, 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:06.720 like you said, just slow going. I mean it wasn't 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:08.760 until two thousand and one that there was a successful 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:11.960 demonstration of shorts algorithm, and that was with a seven 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:16.399 cubit computer that found the factors off. Yeah, they have 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:20.720 factors of It's still it's still something. I mean, hey, no, no, no, 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:22.119 I mean that's impressive. I mean I think that the 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:24.760