my personal story began when I was 10
years old
sitting in a clover field with my two
sisters I don’t really know why but I
suddenly said I will now close my eyes
and pick up a four-leaf clover
so I closed my eyes I picked up
something and to all of our surprise it
really was a four-leaf clover so was it
chance or just a magical moment none of
the above you’ll know what at the end of
this talk so then I grew up and I after
10 years of training joined the field of
quantum physics now if you and quantum
are not the best of friends then don’t
worry I’ll explain what it means in a
few moment in my everyday work I try to
find solutions to equations like these
and I really love my work I really love
my work but sometimes just sometimes it
feels a little bit like running 5
marathons in a row so what if I told you
that with 5 minutes of training you will
be able to solve these puzzles and not
just you but also your ten-year-old son
or daughter my team and I have created a
computer game it’s been played by more
than 150 thousand people around the
world and they have clearly demonstrated
that normal people can solve quantum
research challenges better than
physicists and even better than
supercomputers that
the power of human intuition we’re now
ready to dive into the wonderful
microscopic world of quantum objects but
first what does this word quantum mean
it’s related to quantity and it’s simply
the smallest unit of something that you
would like to count so being in Denmark
let’s use Lego blocks as an example if
you zoom into all matter around us you
will eventually find that it consists of
individual building blocks the atoms and
just like Lego blocks come in different
colors and sizes so too are there many
different atoms there’s nitrogen and
hydrogen and oxygen and those are the
building blocks that put together in
different ways makes all of metal around
us so an atom how big is it take a
single grain of sand it contains more
atoms than there are grains of sand on
earth more atoms than there are grains
of sand on earth it means that we can
dive into the quantum world and have
small tiny objects and control them but
it’s even more slippery than that
because they are strangely behaving are
you ready here begins your five minute
journey into becoming a quantum
physicist but there’s no learning
without doing so please now take out
your cell phones open the game of
quantum moves and press play try out the
game a couple of times the idea is that
you have a liquid and you’re supposed to
transport it as quickly as possible into
the target area what you’re really
controlling when playing the games is a
laser beam that picks up an individual
atom and moves it into the target area
hopefully this is a fun game we worked a
lot to try to make it fun I’m sorry to
say that from now on we get back to the
equations for the rest of the talk
no no but we now continue the talk in
order to become quantum physicists you
also have to learn to quantum
superpowers the first one is called
quantum superposition and it’s the
ability of atoms to be in two different
places at the same time you can think of
it as being able to sit here listening
to my talk and at the same time
snuggling up in bed reading a good book
if you take a rock and throw it into a
lake it will create ripples or waves an
atom being in many different locations
at the same time is also described as
this wave or liquid like substance so if
you ever try to pick up water or hot
coffee and be late and try to run then
you know that it’s a difficult challenge
to avoid spilling I would have loved to
illustrate this on stage but
unfortunately the TEDx organizers didn’t
think it was a good idea so fortunately
there’s also another classical analogy
to our games and that’s a child on a
swing or pendulum and I actually brought
a high-tech pendulum for you my shoe the
task in the game is how should I move my
hand in order to move the shoe from here
to there without any oscillation in the
end I will run with it and I will try to
shake it in order to take out all of the
emotional energy that’s the challenge in
the game so we asked you to solve so
that was quantum superpower number one
quantum superpower number two is a
strange quantum effect that is called
quantum tunneling it’s the ability of
atoms to tunnel through barriers
translated to human scale you can think
of me running towards a wall and instead
of crashing into it I appear on the
other side unharmed in the games you
will see quantum tunneling appearing as
the liquid flowing uphill so that’s a
very strange effect are you still not
very comfortable with objects that can
be in two places at the same time with
atoms that can walk through closed doors
then you are in good company because two
of the founding fathers of quantum
physics Einstein and Schrodinger have
both said that they regretted ever
playing part in the development of this
crazy theory
I’ll now try to convince you that
sometimes for solving a complex task you
don’t necessarily have to fully
understand it but simply intuitively
accepted when we play games we are very
often forced to accept strange rules or
strange laws of physics one example is a
pure game called Porter you walk around
solve challenges one of them is to pick
up a bag which is just beyond your reach
which is physically impossible except
that in this game you have two portals
at your disposal you can place one on a
side wall and you can walk through it
and if you place the other one in the
ceiling then you fall out there you grab
the bag and you do the seemingly
impossible in our games the same thing
happens you have intuition from running
with water and then you mix it with the
intuitive acceptance that in this
particular game water can flow uphill so
you form what we could call a quantum
intuition and you become a quantum
physicist without even noticing it
people around the world have played the
games just like you and become quantum
physicists when
we looked at the data we found something
amazing not only did many of the players
find better solutions then our powerful
computers could do looking at the
millions of data points also revealed
deep insights into the nature of the
physics problem that me and my team of
highly skilled physicists couldn’t
discover on our own that’s why I dare to
call you quantum physicists because
where as I solve problems rationally and
using equations you use your intuition
and perhaps we should do this more often
so who are these players and and why do
they play one of them is an accountant
and and she says that for her
it’s a send moment coming home from work
and contributing to science by playing
our games another one a sales assistant
sent me this video because he had
struggled so hard to find solutions to
one of the very complex problems that we
had building up his intuition
game-by-game he learned to play tricks
with this funny
acting liquid you may actually now if
you look closely recognize the trick
that he employs as quantum tunneling a
phenomenon so complex that my fourth
year physics students struggle to
understand it and yet here you see it
being employed by a player with no
formal training in physics and that’s
how the power of games can turn you into
a quantum physicist in five minutes
so now that I’ve hopefully convinced you
that using the games I can create a
global army of quantum physicists you
may ask why should I bother normal
computers are based on operations on
strings of bits and these bits can
either be 0 or 1 in my lab we are
constructing something called a quantum
computer operating on individual atoms
quantum bits there can be both 0 and 1
at the same time this means that the
quantum computer can perform nearly
infinitely many operations
at once and that’s not just having an
eight-core upgraded 8-core normal
computer something much much more
powerful let me illustrate with an
example nearly 2 percent of the world’s
energy consumption is spent producing
fertilizer it’s a process that requires
high temperatures and high pressures and
yet bacteria can do this at room
temperature how do they do this
we have no idea but with the
computational power of quantum computers
we think we can learn those tricks and
we can produce enough fertilizer to feed
the growing world population that’s why
in many labs around the world
including Google Microsoft and IBM they
try to build a quantum computer we all
share one column common problem and that
is quantum bits lose their information
very quickly due to random influences
from the environment what you could do
is speed up all of these processes and
that’s exactly what the players have
achieved for us they found ways of
picking up an atom and moving it around
in our potential quantum computer much
faster than we thought theoretically
possible and thereby they helped us take
a very important step in the development
so far this was just a game of a
simulation of an atom in the past months
we have also taken the democratization
of science one step further by building
tools allowing normal people on the
internet to get access to the real atoms
in my lab in Denmark sidestepping the
years of training normally required we
try to make it as easy as playing a game
to create entirely new quantum
experiments in a matter of seconds these
results are just the latest in a citizen
science revolution which is spreading
across many fields of science in the
Galaxy Zoo project you can help
researchers map out galaxies
in the projects of folded and it’s Anna
you can help researchers search for
cures for diseases like hiv/aids and
tuberculosis the fact that you with no
formal training and very casual effort
can contribute to solving these very
complex problems is the first of my two
main points the second one is about you
and me as players and as human beings
and how we are different from computer
algorithms if you follow the tech news
in recent years then you may have heard
that artificial intelligence algorithms
have beaten expert players at games of
Jeopardy and chess and recently also go
how come then we can use games to solve
problems that not even the most powerful
supercomputers can do one reason that my
researchers and I are fascinated with
the human mind is our generic ability to
solve problems despite often seemingly
not having enough information at our
disposal we humans know that we don’t
have infinite storage capacity right so
we filter hard and then we make leaps of
faith or intuition on an individual
level if you play out our games and you
are very steady handed then you will
actually probably be led to try out very
similar solutions and iteratively
improving them on the other hand if you
play our game on a shaky subway it’s
doing like this then you have to abandon
that strategy and try out much more
different solutions and it’s actually
been established that for tasks of
creativity and innovation you actually
have to have a period of crazy
exploration so to me this is a striking
example that sometimes being less
skilled at something makes you more able
to solve it I talked about memory and
steadiness of hand but of course there
are many if
human skills wouldn’t be fantastic to be
able to map out all of them and create
what you’ll call an equation of
innovation that takes any given
innovation challenge and tells you
exactly which skillset is needed to
solve it of course this is an extremely
daunting task but we believe that with
hundreds of thousands of people solving
these complex challenges we will have
enough data to unlock some of the subtle
patterns underlying human innovation
does human innovation depend on gender
and age or culture again we don’t know
but finding out may actually be the key
to developing entirely new forms of
artificial intelligence that are much
more like true human intelligence I
started out this journey by closing my
eyes and picking up a four-leaf clover I
know now that it was not chance my mind
knew that the four-leaf clover was there
without me rationally being aware of it
in many ways in my current research I
seem to be reliving this fantastic
discovery because I started out this
project gamifying quantum research
challenges a crazy project with no
rational hope of being able to find
anything useful but I closed my eyes and
trusted my instincts and I hope in the
future you will do the same thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
years old
sitting in a clover field with my two
sisters I don’t really know why but I
suddenly said I will now close my eyes
and pick up a four-leaf clover
so I closed my eyes I picked up
something and to all of our surprise it
really was a four-leaf clover so was it
chance or just a magical moment none of
the above you’ll know what at the end of
this talk so then I grew up and I after
10 years of training joined the field of
quantum physics now if you and quantum
are not the best of friends then don’t
worry I’ll explain what it means in a
few moment in my everyday work I try to
find solutions to equations like these
and I really love my work I really love
my work but sometimes just sometimes it
feels a little bit like running 5
marathons in a row so what if I told you
that with 5 minutes of training you will
be able to solve these puzzles and not
just you but also your ten-year-old son
or daughter my team and I have created a
computer game it’s been played by more
than 150 thousand people around the
world and they have clearly demonstrated
that normal people can solve quantum
research challenges better than
physicists and even better than
supercomputers that
the power of human intuition we’re now
ready to dive into the wonderful
microscopic world of quantum objects but
first what does this word quantum mean
it’s related to quantity and it’s simply
the smallest unit of something that you
would like to count so being in Denmark
let’s use Lego blocks as an example if
you zoom into all matter around us you
will eventually find that it consists of
individual building blocks the atoms and
just like Lego blocks come in different
colors and sizes so too are there many
different atoms there’s nitrogen and
hydrogen and oxygen and those are the
building blocks that put together in
different ways makes all of metal around
us so an atom how big is it take a
single grain of sand it contains more
atoms than there are grains of sand on
earth more atoms than there are grains
of sand on earth it means that we can
dive into the quantum world and have
small tiny objects and control them but
it’s even more slippery than that
because they are strangely behaving are
you ready here begins your five minute
journey into becoming a quantum
physicist but there’s no learning
without doing so please now take out
your cell phones open the game of
quantum moves and press play try out the
game a couple of times the idea is that
you have a liquid and you’re supposed to
transport it as quickly as possible into
the target area what you’re really
controlling when playing the games is a
laser beam that picks up an individual
atom and moves it into the target area
hopefully this is a fun game we worked a
lot to try to make it fun I’m sorry to
say that from now on we get back to the
equations for the rest of the talk
no no but we now continue the talk in
order to become quantum physicists you
also have to learn to quantum
superpowers the first one is called
quantum superposition and it’s the
ability of atoms to be in two different
places at the same time you can think of
it as being able to sit here listening
to my talk and at the same time
snuggling up in bed reading a good book
if you take a rock and throw it into a
lake it will create ripples or waves an
atom being in many different locations
at the same time is also described as
this wave or liquid like substance so if
you ever try to pick up water or hot
coffee and be late and try to run then
you know that it’s a difficult challenge
to avoid spilling I would have loved to
illustrate this on stage but
unfortunately the TEDx organizers didn’t
think it was a good idea so fortunately
there’s also another classical analogy
to our games and that’s a child on a
swing or pendulum and I actually brought
a high-tech pendulum for you my shoe the
task in the game is how should I move my
hand in order to move the shoe from here
to there without any oscillation in the
end I will run with it and I will try to
shake it in order to take out all of the
emotional energy that’s the challenge in
the game so we asked you to solve so
that was quantum superpower number one
quantum superpower number two is a
strange quantum effect that is called
quantum tunneling it’s the ability of
atoms to tunnel through barriers
translated to human scale you can think
of me running towards a wall and instead
of crashing into it I appear on the
other side unharmed in the games you
will see quantum tunneling appearing as
the liquid flowing uphill so that’s a
very strange effect are you still not
very comfortable with objects that can
be in two places at the same time with
atoms that can walk through closed doors
then you are in good company because two
of the founding fathers of quantum
physics Einstein and Schrodinger have
both said that they regretted ever
playing part in the development of this
crazy theory
I’ll now try to convince you that
sometimes for solving a complex task you
don’t necessarily have to fully
understand it but simply intuitively
accepted when we play games we are very
often forced to accept strange rules or
strange laws of physics one example is a
pure game called Porter you walk around
solve challenges one of them is to pick
up a bag which is just beyond your reach
which is physically impossible except
that in this game you have two portals
at your disposal you can place one on a
side wall and you can walk through it
and if you place the other one in the
ceiling then you fall out there you grab
the bag and you do the seemingly
impossible in our games the same thing
happens you have intuition from running
with water and then you mix it with the
intuitive acceptance that in this
particular game water can flow uphill so
you form what we could call a quantum
intuition and you become a quantum
physicist without even noticing it
people around the world have played the
games just like you and become quantum
physicists when
we looked at the data we found something
amazing not only did many of the players
find better solutions then our powerful
computers could do looking at the
millions of data points also revealed
deep insights into the nature of the
physics problem that me and my team of
highly skilled physicists couldn’t
discover on our own that’s why I dare to
call you quantum physicists because
where as I solve problems rationally and
using equations you use your intuition
and perhaps we should do this more often
so who are these players and and why do
they play one of them is an accountant
and and she says that for her
it’s a send moment coming home from work
and contributing to science by playing
our games another one a sales assistant
sent me this video because he had
struggled so hard to find solutions to
one of the very complex problems that we
had building up his intuition
game-by-game he learned to play tricks
with this funny
acting liquid you may actually now if
you look closely recognize the trick
that he employs as quantum tunneling a
phenomenon so complex that my fourth
year physics students struggle to
understand it and yet here you see it
being employed by a player with no
formal training in physics and that’s
how the power of games can turn you into
a quantum physicist in five minutes
so now that I’ve hopefully convinced you
that using the games I can create a
global army of quantum physicists you
may ask why should I bother normal
computers are based on operations on
strings of bits and these bits can
either be 0 or 1 in my lab we are
constructing something called a quantum
computer operating on individual atoms
quantum bits there can be both 0 and 1
at the same time this means that the
quantum computer can perform nearly
infinitely many operations
at once and that’s not just having an
eight-core upgraded 8-core normal
computer something much much more
powerful let me illustrate with an
example nearly 2 percent of the world’s
energy consumption is spent producing
fertilizer it’s a process that requires
high temperatures and high pressures and
yet bacteria can do this at room
temperature how do they do this
we have no idea but with the
computational power of quantum computers
we think we can learn those tricks and
we can produce enough fertilizer to feed
the growing world population that’s why
in many labs around the world
including Google Microsoft and IBM they
try to build a quantum computer we all
share one column common problem and that
is quantum bits lose their information
very quickly due to random influences
from the environment what you could do
is speed up all of these processes and
that’s exactly what the players have
achieved for us they found ways of
picking up an atom and moving it around
in our potential quantum computer much
faster than we thought theoretically
possible and thereby they helped us take
a very important step in the development
so far this was just a game of a
simulation of an atom in the past months
we have also taken the democratization
of science one step further by building
tools allowing normal people on the
internet to get access to the real atoms
in my lab in Denmark sidestepping the
years of training normally required we
try to make it as easy as playing a game
to create entirely new quantum
experiments in a matter of seconds these
results are just the latest in a citizen
science revolution which is spreading
across many fields of science in the
Galaxy Zoo project you can help
researchers map out galaxies
in the projects of folded and it’s Anna
you can help researchers search for
cures for diseases like hiv/aids and
tuberculosis the fact that you with no
formal training and very casual effort
can contribute to solving these very
complex problems is the first of my two
main points the second one is about you
and me as players and as human beings
and how we are different from computer
algorithms if you follow the tech news
in recent years then you may have heard
that artificial intelligence algorithms
have beaten expert players at games of
Jeopardy and chess and recently also go
how come then we can use games to solve
problems that not even the most powerful
supercomputers can do one reason that my
researchers and I are fascinated with
the human mind is our generic ability to
solve problems despite often seemingly
not having enough information at our
disposal we humans know that we don’t
have infinite storage capacity right so
we filter hard and then we make leaps of
faith or intuition on an individual
level if you play out our games and you
are very steady handed then you will
actually probably be led to try out very
similar solutions and iteratively
improving them on the other hand if you
play our game on a shaky subway it’s
doing like this then you have to abandon
that strategy and try out much more
different solutions and it’s actually
been established that for tasks of
creativity and innovation you actually
have to have a period of crazy
exploration so to me this is a striking
example that sometimes being less
skilled at something makes you more able
to solve it I talked about memory and
steadiness of hand but of course there
are many if
human skills wouldn’t be fantastic to be
able to map out all of them and create
what you’ll call an equation of
innovation that takes any given
innovation challenge and tells you
exactly which skillset is needed to
solve it of course this is an extremely
daunting task but we believe that with
hundreds of thousands of people solving
these complex challenges we will have
enough data to unlock some of the subtle
patterns underlying human innovation
does human innovation depend on gender
and age or culture again we don’t know
but finding out may actually be the key
to developing entirely new forms of
artificial intelligence that are much
more like true human intelligence I
started out this journey by closing my
eyes and picking up a four-leaf clover I
know now that it was not chance my mind
knew that the four-leaf clover was there
without me rationally being aware of it
in many ways in my current research I
seem to be reliving this fantastic
discovery because I started out this
project gamifying quantum research
challenges a crazy project with no
rational hope of being able to find
anything useful but I closed my eyes and
trusted my instincts and I hope in the
future you will do the same thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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