17
Conclusion – Blue Skies
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going get.
– Forrest Gump
Considering the wise words of Forrest Gump, the opportunity to write this book has definitely been "like a box of chocolates". Now that I am in the last chapter of this book, I can say that it has been a rewarding, humbling, and an amazing learning experience.
After two years of delivering a weekly blog post at Daily Fintech, the second most read FinTech blog in the world, I knew I could write. I had planned to begin a writing career in 2020. But the opportunity to write a book arrived a year earlier than I anticipated. I knew life had thrown me a curve ball, that I was well positioned to hit out of the park.
Many of my friends have been working on books in AI, Blockchain, and quantum computing over the last couple of years. When I looked at authors of books in quantum technologies, I saw physicists and computer scientists. I was definitely not one of those. I had to carve out a thesis for the book that focused on what I was a specialist in.
In one of my earliest conversations on quantum computing with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, she had mentioned that one needs to have a PhD in Physics, Math, and Computer Science to get quantum technologies completely. I knew it was a lighthearted comment, but there was some truth in it. Therefore, when I was developing the thesis of the book, I knew I had to stick to my strengths.
My strengths came from my journey as a Venture Capital (VC) investor over the past 5 to 6 years. My experience as a VC had taught me two key lessons over the years. The first one was that technology was just a means to an end, and it is essential to focus on the "So What?" The second lesson was that a technologist should be able to keep the narrative simple.
Before I started my VC career, I was working in banks as a data and technology specialist. It often involved working with Managing Directors and C-Suite executives. Many of these highly accomplished individuals looked at technology as a silver bullet. They felt there was a special technology out there that could solve their business model and process inefficiencies. I had to keep stressing to them that technology was just a means to an end.
Therefore, as a VC, one of the key focus areas for me was to look beyond the hype. I had to focus on the business applications and viability of technologies I was evaluating. In 2019 alone, I had the pleasure of looking at over 400 technology start-ups. This number would go past 2,000 if we took the last five years into account. This is pretty typical for most people in the VC industry.
This experience had placed me in a unique position to look beyond the hype that I was witnessing around quantum technologies. Every time I heard about a concept in this space, the first question I would ask is, "so what problem is it going to solve?" My approach to this book has been exactly that.
I didn't want to cover the Math or the Physics behind quantum computing extensively, because I wasn't equipped to talk about that. However, I knew how to look past the hype of a technology and focus on what it brought to the table, and the potential business applications.
The other key attribute that I have developed as a VC is keeping the narrative simple. Often times, I see entrepreneurs with strong technology backgrounds struggling to move away from their jargon. The scientific field has people who will be able to cope with such language and explanation, but when a technology is in the process of going mainstream, it is essential to create a connection with the wider ecosystem. That connection can only happen by simplifying the narrative around the technology.
Beneficiaries of these technologies, be it businesses or consumers, should be able to relate to the applications of the technology. For instance, as a consumer of a bank, you only care about what mortgage rates, credit limits, and deposit rates you get from them. You don't care about if they used Monte Carlo methods or Historical Simulation to assess their credit risk.
This book essentially is a culmination of all these thought processes. It has been extremely difficult to simplify something as complex as quantum computing. At the same time, it was a delightful experience to explore quantum computing from an application perspective. In this chapter, I will bring together the different dimensions of quantum technologies that I have tried to cover in this book.
Let's first pay attention to the elephant in the room. How hyped is quantum computing? Every technology goes through ups and downs, and quantum computing is no exception. Let's consider where we are with quantum computing, based on what we have discussed in this book.
Is there hype?
The principles of quantum mechanics that quantum computing relies on have been around for more than a century. The idea of quantum computers, as we discussed in the early chapters of this book, was introduced in the 1980s by Richard Feynman. Since then, every time there was a groundbreaking algorithm like Shor's or Grover's algorithms, it has added to the hype.
On a similar note, where there has been a proof of concept conducted successfully like China's quantum satellite initiative (Micius), optimism goes through the roof. That's just the way human beings are wired to react due to the increased dopamine levels arising from the newness of these inventions. That is also what keeps the ecosystem optimistic and in the hunt for new breakthroughs, despite the odds.
Recall my interview with Dave Snelling, and the picture he drew for me:
Figure 1: A rough drawing by Dave Snelling, explaining the trends in annealing
Very much like the field of artificial intelligence, quantum computing has gone through several ebbs and flows since the 1930s. During my discussions with Dave Snelling from Fujitsu, he mentioned that quantum computers are between 15-20 years away from mainstream adoption. We discussed how some specific capabilities of quantum annealers could happen quicker than gate-based quantum computers.
Therefore, we may be able to see solutions for optimization problems a little sooner than Dave's timelines. Please see the preceding figure for an illustration. Organizations like Fujitsu are also working toward bridging the gap between classical and quantum computers through digital annealers. There are several applications that we have highlighted throughout this book that are made possible by digital annealers, and many of them are already in a commercial environment.
However, one consistent aspect of this technology that several players have tried to leverage is "quantum supermacy". Quantum supremacy has been used even by the likes of Google to create PR about their initiatives around the technology. Even Gartner are not immune to chipping into this hype. Their following chart plots expectations for AI over time:
Figure 2: Garter AI hype cycle, 2019
The preceding "hype chart" shows Gartner's view of how far machine learning powered by quantum computers is from reaching peak hype. I personally don't believe this field will peak within the next ten years. We are going to see a couple of more peaks and troughs in the next ten to fifteen years before the technology goes mainstream.
Dave Snelling and many others whom I interviewed for this book provided their thoughts on quantum supremacy. For instance, according to Dave, quantum supremacy cannot be just about processing speed. It has to be about the ability of quantum computers to solve problems that haven't been possible by classical computers within reasonable time.
Google's claims about performing a calculation in a few days, where it would take 10,000 years for a classical computer, may not necessarily satisfy the scientific community. Therefore, when there is a claim from a firm about achieving quantum supremacy, it must be taken with a pinch of salt.
One desirable outcome of the hype around quantum computing is that it helps raise awareness around the risks that the technology can pose. During my discussion with Dinesh Nagarajan from IBM, he highlighted the risks that the technology could pose to existing cryptographic techniques used by the internet. He also highlighted that, in large corporations, technology change typically takes 7-8 years.
Therefore, some of the hype around the technology could help quantum computing to receive much-needed attention from the boards of these firms that are vulnerable in a post-quantum world. As the technology evolves, these organizations can prepare to be agile and ready to face the threat.
This is not to justify the irrational exuberance around some of the cool technologies we have in today's data-driven world. It is hard to not have that excitement, considering the possibilities of the technology. However, it is important to understand the reality of where we are with quantum computing and set realistic expectations based upon that. Let's now look at some of the interesting use cases of the technologies we covered in the book.
Is there merit?
There was a recent conversation on Twitter that I got dragged into about the merits of quantum technology. The question posed was if I saw merit and real-world applications from quantum technologies. The answer is yes, because, at least in the last year, I have seen a few quantum computing startups moving into commercializing their solution. However, I would be cautious and not get too excited about these solutions just yet.
Most of these companies have solutions that can have groundbreaking impacts on various aspects of our lives. But they are yet to prove themselves in a live environment, at scale. Solutions I have come across just in the last 12 months are spread across diverse fields including healthcare, climate technology, financial services, and even oil and gas. Most of these are problems that are hard for classical computers to solve.
Despite the state of maturity of the technology, there is no denying that there is potential. Health and wealth have been two key areas where innovation can have massive impact on the ground. This is especially true in emerging markets where there are billions of people without good access to healthcare or financial services. Let's briefly touch upon the use cases that we discussed in the book both in the chapters covering interviews and others.
Healthcare
We touched upon use cases where quantum computing could be used to improve the process of drug discovery. There are two angles to this. One is where the technology can shrink the time to market for drugs as it can simulate scenarios where the drug can be effective or otherwise. This process hasn't been as efficient with classical computers.
The second aspect of this use case is the quality of the fit of a drug to a specific health condition can be assessed with a greater degree of confidence than using classical computers. Putting these two aspects together, we can start seeing better drugs delivered faster to market.
Quantum computers can also help with diagnostics and treatment of complex health issues such as cancer. There are several variables that a doctor would need to take into account while prescribing the right course of action for a cancer patient. Using quantum computers could give us a solution that takes into account the correlations between the different variables.
Today, this process is mostly manual, where doctors assess the criticality of the condition, the body part affected, and the potential impact of the cancer cells on the healthy ones before deciding on the treatment method. Having looked at health, let's briefly touch upon the wealth use cases.
Financial services
This is an industry in which I have spent most of my career. As a result, I have had first-hand experience of the data challenges that the financial services industry has. Going back to Fujitsu's Digital Annealer, we are already seeing live applications inspired by quantum methodologies.
The Annealer has already proven to be much faster than classical computers for problems such as portfolio rebalancing and risk management for instance. While the financial viability of performing a portfolio rebalancing on an instantaneous basis is still unclear, the ability to do so would certainly be useful. Especially in times of market stress conditions, if a portfolio manager wants to quickly reshuffle their portfolio and reduce risks, the ability to do it instantaneously would be a great boon.
I have worked in a regulated environment where the need to perform some of the risk analytics in real time was vital. Most hedging decisions rely upon risk reporting capabilities that are computed overnight. Being able to make these decisions and corresponding changes to the portfolio instantaneously or intraday as a crisis unfolds in the market would result in a massive advantage within the financial sector.
Financial services are also a field where there are many correlated variables that need to be taken into account to compute an efficient risk-return profile. This correlated variables problem is also true in understanding the possibility of a recession, for instance. Modeling these possibilities with a high degree of confidence is something that is also being worked on by quantum experts across the world.
Having looked at financial services, let's briefly consider quantum computing's implications for logistics.
Logistics
Logistics is a field that has some of the hardest problems for classical computers to solve. We discussed the shortest flight path problem and the travelling salesman problem. These are optimization problems that could be solved using digital and quantum annealers.
We touched upon the experiments that Airbus is undertaking with the quantum computing community. They are trying to model the interaction of air with the wings of their planes. Understanding the aerodynamics of a flight better can add fuel efficiencies during take-off and landing. This can be a huge win for a world that is in a climate emergency, and of course lead to higher profits for the companies achieving greater efficiency.
Climate
That leads us nicely into climate-related use cases for quantum computers. Let's take the fertilizer industry, for instance. Nitrogen-based fertilizers are the most widely used and are the most in demand from the agriculture industry. However, the current manufacturing process is energy-intensive and has a high carbon footprint.
Ironically, nature deals with nitrogen fixation in a much simpler and energy-efficient way. The inability to model nitrogen fixation in lab conditions has crippled our attempts to emulate this more efficient manufacturing process. There are several ongoing research projects attempting to model nitrogen fixation using quantum computers. This will be a huge win for humanity, as we have a pressing need to move to more sustainable industrial processes.
We also discussed other innovative use cases like climate modeling. Today, climate modeling is a far cry from being able to model the vast complexity of our world. There are AI startups that are looking to solve this problem. We must account for a great number of interrelated variables, from carbon emissions, to ocean currents. We must also account for feedback loops such as melting glaciers; this phenomenon leads to less global ice coverage. Ice reflects the sun's rays. Therefore, less ice means more heat being absorbed by the Earth, which in turn melts more ice and so on. If we wish to model our changing climate effectively, we will need more powerful technologies process this complexity, ideally in real-time.
A quantum computer can take into account the correlation between these variables and provide us a clearer view of where we are, with a higher degree of confidence. We also discussed other potential use cases such as modeling carbon capture using quantum computers. Let's now touch upon the use of quantum computers for election modeling.
Moving on from global climate, let's briefly consider how quantum computing will impact our political climates.
Elections
The past 5 years have seen a major shift in global democratic processes where social media has played a significant role in governments being elected. This may not come across as great as an issue as healthcare, financial markets, or climate change, but policy makers coming to power in major economies like the US, Europe, India, or China have the ability to change the lives of billions of people.
Max Henderson kindly offered his insights from his work at QxBranch, where he has been using quantum annealing for election modeling. I would be keen to follow up with him later this year as the American elections unfold in 2020.
That should give you a view of the potential of the technology. Yes, it is early days. Yes, there are challenges. But the possibilities are simply mind-boggling, and I am glad that humanity will be moving toward a brighter future with such breakthrough innovation. Let's now look at the roadblocks ahead that must be overcome before we see this innovation really take root.
A bumpy road ahead
That section title is a give-away in some sense. There is sometimes skepticism and cynicism about the possibilities of quantum technologies, because there are major roadblocks that we need to clear. We can't talk about the rosy future with all of the cool applications that entails, without acknowledging the "if"s and the "but"s involved.
We had an interview with Sam McArdle dedicated to error correction, because this is a major blocker for quantum computers to go mainstream. The error correction occurs because quantum particles storing information interact with the external environment and therefore lose the information that they hold over time.
Unlike traditional computers, quantum computers rely on qubits. Information held in qubits cannot be copied into other qubits for fault tolerance. This is a limitation and a feature of quantum particles that makes this field both challenging and exciting. However, without finding ways to keep quantum particles like photons that carry information, it is hard to see quantum computers going mainstream.
In today's quantum computers, there can be a thousand noisy qubits for every error-free logical qubit. There is a high level of redundancy required in order to handle errors in these machines. However, this needs to change for better adoption of quantum computers. In our discussion with Sam, we touched upon NISQ techniques where these noisy qubits can be used for computing for certain business applications.
This is currently being explored in fields like chemical research, where noise can be a feature and not a disruption. Chemical reactions can be modelled using noisy qubits that represent the noisy environment that they would occur in reality.
These challenges need to be addressed before we can dream of a world where quantum computers can play a major role. One of the key themes of the book has been how quantum computers can pose a threat to existing cryptography that most of data and digital value interactions rely on. Let's take a brief look at that.
The collision course
The first time I learned about the potential scenario where quantum computers can get through cryptographic techniques that we use today, I was quite astounded. Quantum computing at that point became a major technology paradigm for me, which has the potential to be as big as the PC or the internet.
The possibility of quantum technology putting the internet at risk is one challenge, but the lack of awareness that the common person has about this possibility is a greater issue in my view. We live in a day and age where data and money transactions have become frictionless, invisible, and therefore mindless.
We are also entering the age of machines where 70% of the potential 175 zettabytes of data that will be created by 2030 will be from machines. Self-driving cars, wearables, and home appliances that transmit information are all creating huge volumes of highly sensitive and personal information. It is indeed a scary proposition that most of these machines will be at the risk of being hacked the moment quantum computers are able to scale.
On another note, Blockchain, which is a very recent invention, has resulted in a flurry of applications across the world. Many of these applications store value, data, and some even store legally binding information. Most Blockchain solutions today use RSA or ECC algorithms to protect data interactions. Some of them even claim these security mechanisms as their differentiation.
However, unless these Blockchain applications move to quantum-proof cryptography, they could be obsolete very soon. We discussed lattice-b cryptography and code-based cryptography that can be categorized as post-quantum cryptography. The potential risk of quantum computing will make users move away from these solutions even if quantum technologies aren't mainstream.
This, when combined with the Blockchain winter we are seeing now, could mean that the entire ecosystem needs to introspect. There are some Blockchain or Distributed Ledger technology platforms like IOTA and QRL that claim they are quantum-proof. However, they represent the minority of the Blockchain community; those who are better prepared to address the risk.
There needs to be a coordinated effort across regulators, governments, and large corporations to make key applications on the internet quantum-proof. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are conducting a search for post quantum cryptographic techniques that can protect the internet.
During my discussion with Dinesh Nagarajan, he mentioned that it is critical for organizations to be "crypto-agile." The dot com boom brought about the agile software development methodology. The quantum era will necessitate solutions to have crypto-agility. This would mean that their infrastructure, platform, and application layers will need to have the ability to swap and change the cryptography that they use. This ability will ensure that they can upgrade the cryptography in a short time and be prepared for any potential cyber risks.
We discussed the challenge that organizations have in preparing for the quantum threat. Organizations need to go through a maturity cycle that results in state of crypto agility. However, most of these large organizations are used to taking 7 to 8 years to upgrade their technology platforms. Therefore, there is some nervousness that if there are any major quantum computing breakthroughs during that time, these organizations are not yet prepared.
In essence, it is not just the Blockchain ecosystem that is on a collision course with quantum technologies. The world that is on the internet is on this collision course too. Therefore, it is imperative that a sustainable cyber solution for data and value exchanges are identified and deployed.
We will also need leadership and governance across continents to stay on track in terms of evolving technology innovation and how that could create new cyber threats to a data driven world. As and when threats are detected within a technology or a platform, controls need to be identified to ensure they are safe for businesses and consumers to use.
We are entering an age where we will not have decades to protect our data. We must be able to do it within a few years, if not months, if we are to keep pace with the power of quantum computing. On that note, let's now touch upon how nations across the world are gearing up for quantum computing.
Nation states and ecosystems
When you have a technological advantage to get hold of the defense secrets of an enemy nation, would you hold back? If the technology allowed you to take control of internet, healthcare information, and information of big financial transactions, wouldn't that tempt you to invest in the technology?
That is precisely why China have invested several billions of dollars into AI and quantum computing. They are clearly leaders within the field of quantum communication with their Micius initiative. This has spurred action across the world as the US, Europe, the UK, Canada, and even India jumping onto the quantum computing band wagon. They have all each allocated about $1 billion for quantum computing research.
It is good that governments are getting involved in the evolution of their regional quantum computing ecosystems. That would help ensure best practices are generally shared, and certain standards are followed across the ecosystem. In the UK, for instance, there are four quantum computing hubs led by different academic institutions. Startups, corporates, and investors collaborate with these hubs to make the most of the research capability.
Despite these efforts, the risk that one of these nations getting ahead in the quantum race cannot be ignored. Even today, we are not sure if any of these nations have actually cracked the quantum puzzle. If one of them have managed to achieve quantum supremacy, there are chances that they are going to be quiet about it. Having a technology advantage in this day and age is similar to having an advantage with nuclear weapons in the post-war era.
Geopolitical wars in future could be fought in a more subtle way, where data is the oil and technology is the weapon. When you have the cyber advantage over an enemy nation, you can disrupt critical infrastructure such as power grids, traffic networks, banking services, hospitals, and all other systems that rely on the internet.
That could cause large scale disruption, bring the capital markets down for days, and lead to billions in losses to the affected nation.
Let's hope that countries build suitable defenses and controls before their adversaries figure out how to cause such damage.
The sky is blue
I am an optimist at heart, despite my VC job where I must make realistic assessments of technology startups. I still have to make optimistic predictions that they will break through their technological, operational, and market barriers. In doing so, they would help achieve high returns for my fund and my investors.
The best part of being a VC is that the job acts like a window into the future. This is because we get early access to innovative companies across industries. Even if a fraction of them succeed at disrupting value chains and ecosystems at scale, the world could be a different place in a few years. By investing in such innovation, we can watch that transition from a nascent state.
With quantum technology companies, I have the opportunity of doing just that. 2019 was perhaps the first time we had several quantum technology companies knock on our doors for funding. They are first movers, but they also have the unenviable job of penetrating or creating a market for their solutions. I am sure that in 2020, the space will start looking different.
In 2020, many of these early movers will be closer to identifying market fits for their products and services. Some of them may even have pilots and live deployments in a commercial environment. It is going to be an exciting few years where we will see excitement, frustration, breakthroughs, roadblocks, and crazy growth.
In this roller coaster ride that quantum computing promises to offer, one attribute of humanity will persist – hope. A hope that we are all working toward a better future for the world. A hope that despite all odds, we will arrive at our destination and achieve our vision for ourselves, our organizations, our countries, our world, and for humanity itself.