Welcome back to Geek Time. This is Geek Time advanced. Hi lulu.

Hi Brad.

We're gonna get into the more advanced ideas of quantum computing, and we're gonna talk about something that Einstein was talking about, he referred to it as spooky action and when you think about spooky, it's kind of a scary idea, maybe not like really, really scary, but something that's spooky is kind of… it’s creepy.

中文里把这个翻译成 “鬼魅效应”或者 “幽灵效应”。

Yes, it is really spooky. Is it because Einstein thought it’s something that is beyond human imagination? Is it that sort of idea?

Yeah, essentially, when we look at spooky action, like a spooky action at a distance, there's this idea of quantum entanglement.

What that means is you have like two particles, electrons or something like that, and they're entangled quantumly, which means that they're always going to be the same. It doesn't matter how far apart you get those two particles, they're always going to be connected, and they're always going to be the same.

So like if you were to use them as a way to transmit data, because they would always be the same, you could essentially transmit data at faster than the speed of light, which is something that according to Einstein wasn't possible, right, he was looking for a way ‘can we travel faster than light?’

People just like it's not possible, but like there's this idea of quantum entanglement which allows us to do this.

Basically, you have these two particles even if they're separated by like one is on earth and one is somewhere in space. We could transmit data between these two particles because they're connected somehow.

I see. So like perhaps it could be used in space exploration like space stations or spaceships…and then…

Yeah.

And then data can be transferred instantaneously.

Yeah, so like for example, if we wanted to send a message to the Mars, it would take a long time, it's not going to get there instantaneously like when we talk at a long distance, it might take a second or two for that to travel.

And so there might be like some sort of echo or time lapse between our conversation on the phone, but when we're looking at this, like if we had two quantum entangled particles, one on a space station and one on earth, we could instantaneously talk to each other. There wouldn't be any gap in between.

Wow. So basically maybe with quantum entanglement in the future talking to Mars or transferring things to Mars would be easier, would take less time than just air dropping it from one of my computers to another computer.

Yeah, like the processing speed would still be the same. But just like you wouldn't have to wait for that signal to be sent across the universe.

I see. 这就是有名的量子纠缠，quantum entanglement. So Einstein actually already came up with this idea.

Yeah, so when you look at the computers like the components, we would have that…you know like, even when you have your own computer, there's a speed between like the processor and like the screen, so it takes a while for whatever when you push a button for things to show up on the screen, it looks like it's instantaneous to you because it's really quick, but if you could see things much more quickly, you could see the time that it takes to process that.

But with quantum computing, it doesn't take that time to for the data in the computer to be sent.

I see.

You don't have to worry about those components slowing things down, which increases the speed even…

But apart from quantum entanglement in terms of transferring data, what kind of other scenarios would quantum computers be used in?

Well, aside from like cryptography that we talked about in the beginning episode or basic episode, there's things like drug manufacturing.

Drug manufacturing?

Drug manufacturing is very difficult because you have to create this molecule, like there will be a molecule, it has all these different elements and atoms combined;

but combining all those atoms properly, or deciding like you know when exactly combining them in a way that would be effective is very difficult because you could have all of the same atoms combining them in one way, and they could be harmful to a person, but you can combine them in another way and they could actually be beneficial to a person; so when they're looking for ways that how can we put this atom together, they have to find a way to do that.

So they run… they can use quantum computers to do that. It's actually very interesting, they've tried to use modern computers do things like that. It was actually a group of humans like just coming up conceptually and designing the molecules themselves. They came up with the idea…

Faster than a computer

Faster than a computer because a computer it just takes them forever.

Yes, so pretty much using existing computers to do this to develop or to create new drugs is very inefficient.

So I guess with quantum computers, you can try some different combinations and they can try all of this, and so this would significantly improve the efficiency for drug manufacturers that can come up with new drugs and really new medication, right?

Yeah. Because it's not just like we mentioned, the computer can see many states at one time, and so basically rather than looking one by one by one, it can see all these different states (at the same time) and then using like superposition, it can like narrow it down to the possible organization.

I see. You know with cryptography, with this drug manufacturing, it sounds like quantum computers they're so useful, but are there any of these computers existing? I think there are, right, based on what I've heard.

There are quantum computers now, but there is very few, one of the current quantum computers is called the D Wave.

The D wave.

But like there's quantum computers are there, and they estimate that we might have as many as 2 to 5,000 quantum computers by the end of the decade, by 2030.

But that's like very few when you consider like how many computers there are nowadays.

Yeah. But what's with this limited number? Is it just because you need to keep it really, really cool at absolute zero? Is that where the technical bottleneck is?

That's one of the reasons, but like another reason is quantum computers would not be good as a personal computer. It's not something that you're going to need to write an email or something like that.

If we… consider VR, we've talked about VR before. If you used a quantum computer to do VR could actually like show us like an actual natural world, much more clearly, much more cleanly than our current computers, it would be like you're actually in a movie. It's not like just pixilated graphic. It would look realistic.

I mean that's really going to be mind boggling. I think technology aside, the thought of using quantum computing technology to do VR simulations and then to really experience that level of clarity and think that you are immersed in a kind of a real world in virtual reality.

I think there's also ethical concerns. Wouldn't we be confused? And maybe there will be a point when we start to doubt our existence. Are we real flesh and blood human beings? Or are we just part of assimilation.

Yeah, that's something that a lot of scientists are looking at nowadays. They're looking to see are there ways that we can determine, whether or not we're actually in a simulation; because some scientists believe that we are currently, yeah…but there is a possibility that we're all part of this simulation, but chances are is that something that's possible? We don't really know.

Now it sounds like quantum computing was all is possible uses. There's some scarce size of it, so what are some of the problems with quantum computing.

Like something that we were looking at now is pretty much anything that we can consider solvable by a quantum computer is solvable by current computers.

And so it’s something we need, but there are scientists that are proposing they have theoretical ideas that quantum computers will be able to actually solve things that current computers cannot. And if you think about like physics problems, when you throw a tennis ball, what is going to happen when it bounces off the wall, there's a lot of different possibilities, right. How does it hit the wall exactly? That really depends on where it's going to go. We can guess, right? Our brains are actually much better than computers at guessing where the ball is going to go according to how we threw it against the wall. But if we threw in all those characteristics into a computer model, it’s very difficult for it to solve that. But they theorize quantum computers will be able to theoretically solve these things at very close to actual rates.

So perhaps like in the future sports would be very different, because if you can use quantum computing to analyze exactly how the ball is going to bounce, then sportsmanship, it's no longer based on experience and practice. It's just based on hardcore computing calculation.

But that's really only true if we're fighting against computers. So we're playing against computers. If you played a video game, you could design a basically like an opponent that could never lose.

We already talking about AI in a possible sentience the other day in the other episode when we were talking about it. With quantum computing, this will probably be how AI would eventually make us their slave.

Most like…when I look at quantum computing and the possibilities of it, I really think that's more of a possibility because when you look at machine learning, it's not just looking at a thousand different states and learning from those thousand different states one by one. You feed the data and it can basically look at all of those states at the same time and it can learn so much better from that.

So I think like this is probably going to be the closest thing that a computer can be to a human brain without making a computer actually biological.

I see, that's scary thought. The other thing that I'm a little bit concerned about and we have a tool or have a technology that is potentially so so powerful.

Yes, when everything works fine, it is really powerful, increases speed, improves efficiency, but what if it makes a mistake? What if there are errors like our computers right now they can have errors, and wouldn’t these errors with quantum computing be amplified simply because of the sheer efficiency and speed of it.

That's actually big issue like when you have a computer and once one error occurs, then that can cause like a cascade of errors. And that's usually when you get your blue screen; but with quantum computing like it can be so fast that if there is an error that like the system will shut down and is so quickly.

But like we have to find ways to stop error propagation or stop the errors from growing at very early, and so we have to find ways to mitigate those problems.

Yeah, it still sounds like there's a long way to go, but then again, when those huge computers were invented, nobody thought that we could fit one of them in our pockets.

So I don't know, I really don't know what's gonna happen in the future, right?

They say, like we mentioned by 2030, there's probably gonna be somewhere between 2 and 5,000 quantum computers in the world, but there might be a quantum computer in everyone's house by 2030, we never know.

I don't know if I should be excited about it or scared, I think this is the great thing about technology, about technological scientific advancement.

All right, on that note, we're gonna wrap up here.

Obviously, we’ve only touched upon the really, really basic bits, even with 2 episodes, so if any of you are working in similar fields, leave us a comment in the comment section and let us know more and educate us. And thank you Brad for coming to the show, I can't wait for our next talk.

No problem.

See you next time.

Looking forward to it. See you next time.