Incarnations of Quantum Computation

Volume 4 | Issue 9 | September 2024

Cosmology of Light Newsletter

Hello Friends,

Quantum computation in its deepest sense can be viewed as a natural parsing mechanism ubiquitously present in the substance of the Universe. It is instrumental in materializing invisible possibility into visible fact. And so it is rather wonderful that incarnations of it should be funded to the degree that they are being funded.

In this newsletter, i draw attention to the key driver behind that funding in the phenomenon of the 'Quantum Carry Trade', to an important species of whole-systems quantum computation in the body of annealing quantum computing, and to a possibility to get to even more powerful incarnations of quantum computation by leveraging the most prevalent of quantum computers - the atom.

Warmly,

Pravir

The Quantum Carry Trade

The carry trade is a strategy in which investors borrow money in a low-interest-rate currency, such as the Japanese yen, and invest it in higher-yielding assets like stocks or bonds in other countries. This strategy profits from the interest rate differential. For decades, cheap Japanese money has been a source of arbitrage, funding investments the world over.

Shor’s algorithm and its threat of decrypting RSA-based security can be considered the basis of a quantum carry trade. Developed by Peter Shor in 1994, this algorithm demonstrates that a quantum computer could factor large numbers exponentially faster than classical computers. Just as the Japanese yen has provided money for global investment, this threat of decryption has become the basis of increasing activity in the quantum computing industry.

Read more in the Forbes article, The Quantum Carry Trade.

Whole-Systems Quantum Computation

To be able to harness dynamics at the quantum level is already a game-changer. To be able to harness it leveraging principles of complex adaptive systems - aka whole-systems quantum computation - is going to result in systematization of quantum supremacy, which refers to the point at which a quantum computer can perform a calculation that is practically impossible for any classical computer to solve in a reasonable amount of time.

In the times to come we should therefore expect to see more displays of this where whole-systems quantum computation, such as D-Wave's annealing quantum computing is used.

A couple of weeks ago I hosted D-Wave CEO Dr. Alan Baratz and Chief Development Officer Dr. Trevor Lanting in a Forbes Technology Council in-depth discussion on the power of annealing quantum computing. With questions from the audience on the impact of quantum technology on AI, blockchain and energy consumption, the panel was rich with insights and conversations on the distinctions between annealing quantum and gate-model computing and how quantum annealing solves complex problems more efficiently than traditional methods.

See a recoding of the event on the Forbes page, The Power of Quantum Annealing.

Toward More Powerful Incarnations

I was invited to deliver a talk on QuantumAI 3 weeks ago. What was meant to be a 20-minute talk turned into a dialog that lasted over 1 hour.

At the heart of this dialog was the idea that the atom is already a functional quantum computer replete with genetic-type information. The intelligence native to quantum-levels - quantum intelligence - uses the atom in some display of its power, that continues to increase as the atom is scaled to molecules, molecular plans, cells, and so on.

Seeing and technologically harnessing this becomes an avenue to incarnate the possibilities of quantum computation more fully.

Link to the slides i used here.

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