[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
even for a few years but I’ve got to
know him better because of my
involvement with the foundation and I
cannot resist the plug if you want to
learn more about the foundation and you
were inspired by what Stephen said and
during that video he actually it didn’t
quote the thing that he’s certainly
become best known for as far as I’m
concerned picking up on the theme of
many of the brilliant speakers that
we’ve already had you know don’t look
down don’t look down where’s mich don’t
look down look up at the stars you know
what better could you have from Steven
anyway my name is Ilias Khan and I’m the
founder and the chief executive of
Cambridge quantum computing and I’m the
husband of my beautiful wife who’s down
there and some of my friends are here
and I have the task of talking about
quantum computing now I think that it
inspires the phrase inspires a number of
different conflicting emotions and those
emotions I think could be curiosity
there might be a little bit of mystery
you know the idea that quantum mechanics
can manifest itself in the context of a
computers a little bit disquieting the
idea that AI well of course it’s not AI
at the moment it’s just data
manipulation so perhaps were on the cusp
of real artificial intelligence what the
hell is it and part of my mission three
years ago I together with a few friends
started what is now a business called
Cambridge quantum computing of course
but our view at the time in twenty
fourteen was that we were looking
forward and we thought that in ten years
time so the mid-2020s there might be the
first prototypes of quantum computing
and what we wanted to do was take the
tools the quantum algorithms and the
software that’s needed to allow these
big lumps of metal to do stuff that’s
actually useful we thought that by the
middle of the 2020s
the first prototypes would be here well
of course we were wrong by some massive
margin and as of today I keep an index
there are 17 credible well-funded
projects that are building quantum
computers there are at least three
quantum computers in existence today and
I spend an increasing amount of time
especially in this last six months or so
telling people about quantum computers
and I strongly believe that you have to
take the mystery out of the quantum
machine and I’ll let you into the little
secret
not even Steven knows how they work he
doesn’t he doesn’t because nobody does
but just because we don’t know how they
work doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t know
what we’re going to be in for all of us
in this room even at my young age right
you’re banished back back of the class
even at my young age I’m going to live
through a revolution you are going to
live through a revolution and that’s
what we need to talk about and oh gosh
right you don’t have to look at that if
you feel dizzy I want to take you back a
little bit to the Apollo 11 mission 1969
for those of you that haven’t got quick
access to you Wikipedia Buzz Aldrin
Armstrong there was a computer that
helped the spacecraft get all the way to
the moon land take off come back safely
that computer it doesn’t matter how many
gigs of memory it had it doesn’t matter
what size it was it doesn’t really
matter how it was engineered and put
together it was a Turing machine for
those of you that are interested Alan
Turing came up with the AI
here in the mid 30s that there was a way
to compute and allow those computations
to help us and then they became these
machines in Princeton and evac univac
there we had these big things with
massive vacuums that were on and off and
the on represented a1 and the off
represented a zero and if you
amalgamated these ones and zeros hey
presto you get a man on the moon and ten
years later IBM came up with the
personal computer and that personal
computer had hundreds of times more
processing power than the machine that
sent the Apollo 11 mission open then
another 10 years later we saw a picture
earlier of this big brick of a phone I
was too young to know that I have no
knowledge about the 1980s but suddenly
this processing power went on and on and
on but the fact is that all of that is a
mere blip in a thousand years time
nobody’s going to remember that what
will they remember they will remember
the Industrial Revolution right who’s
gonna tell me spinning jenny what year
I’ll tell you I’ll tell ya what
definitely was around then 1764 and what
was the impact of the spinning jenny
right northwest of England Lancashire it
was iconic when human beings stopped
having to lift things we suddenly could
rely not on other animals like mules or
slaves but on machines and we started
parallel processing and a little bit
down the road then what happened steam
engines came before you knew it there
was automobiles and then we were
pilfering the earth for hydrocarbons we
had aeroplanes and then cheering came
along the next revolution is the one
that matters because we are on the brink
in fact we’re into it right now quantum
computers and quantum computing is a way
that nature computes
now we’re going to do a
quantum-mechanical exercise right here
within the allotted TEDx 18 minutes so
those of you that are already thinking
about leaving leave now and the rest are
going to be part of the competition now
give you a little bit of context the
term quantum computing came about in the
late 70s and early 1980s was a fantastic
scientist one of the Great’s not as
great as Steven but nevertheless right
up there Richard Fineman Nobel laureate
and coincidentally at about the same
time David Deutsch who’s in Oxford
thought of this idea as well but he was
talking about parallel universes and
multiverses and we’re definitely not
going there today so we’re going to
stick to richard fineman and richard
fineman was looking at how free energy
dissipation affects computation now this
was a topic that is still of great
importance all of you will have a hot
iphone after a little while free energy
now it does matter what it is comes in
electricity and it turns it around and
you have a computation of what comes out
the other way as an output and in the
middle you lose a lot of energy no
matter what you do where you drive in a
car or having a computer to do work for
you free energy dissipation is an
interesting topic and Fineman had a
thought experiment he said what if we
computed them the way that nature
computes and we’ve got at the back of
our cortex a few billion neurons which
in turn have trillions and trillions of
synaptic charges are going in your area
doctor sorry I will not trade in your
turf but the energy that goes into that
is infinitesimally you can’t even light
a light bulb with it or a very very very
light and low-energy light bulb if you
try to replicate that you’d need enough
energy to power 10,000 homes so why can
nature do that in the back of your brain
in a leaf a leaf takes light and what
does it convert it to amongst other
things oxygen
and he does it with such efficiency so
Fineman said if we could compute using
atoms we would compute as nature compute
for 30 years more than 30 years we’ve
been wondering and dreaming of whether
we can actually do what nature does will
nature allow us to do it and I’m gonna
just read we’ve just broken another rule
attendees at the end is 1985 in fact
I’ve got a little thing there of the
article easily google-able and if you
haven’t yet ready you should richard
fineman 1985 and at the end of this
article which was actually in turn the
speech that he’d made a few months
earlier he says at any rate it seems to
me that the laws of physics present no
barrier to reducing the size of
computers until bits are the size of
atoms and quantum behavior holds
dominant sway now it’s that last bit
quantum behavior holds dominance way
it’s not written up there don’t try and
read it there what does that mean what
it means see the universe in its
indivisible elements and the
infinitesimal level works on rules that
are different that you and I and
everybody else as macroscopic operates
on now just to go back to a computer for
a second for those of you that don’t
recognize this anybody over the age of
35 this is an abacus
this is no different from well I won’t
take it out because I can’t find it
you’ve all got smartphones your
smartphone is that a kid you know inside
your smartphone there are billions and
billions of transistors and the
transistors either on or off
we’ve just been using abacuses but a
quantum computer will actually for the
first time allow us to compute in a
parallel manner and the reason it will
allow us to do that
is a premise that I’d like just to ask
you to put into your mind right now
imagine for a second the most powerful
computer that you can think of it
doesn’t matter you might you know some
of you might get turned on by thinking
of this big huge machines the men
amongst you the rest of you might think
of what the computer could do it doesn’t
matter just think of a big big big
computer the most powerful now multiply
that a billion times you might get close
to thinking then of what ultimately a
quantum computer will do and it doesn’t
matter where there were four years away
or eight years away or ten years away
we’re very very close and the original
prototypes are here already and the
reason is that they’re different they’re
not just faster the laws as I said
earlier of quantum mechanics allow us to
do something that we’ve never been able
to do app until now now there are two
tags superposition and tangle Minh it
doesn’t matter it’s another language
every discipline has its own language my
job is to lift us up away from the
language and I want to show you tell you
ensure you and hopefully share with you
what that means so we’re going to do the
quantum mechanical experiment before I
get kicked off the stage right so I
don’t believe in volunteers so I’m going
to pick people right
I’d like ten people to stand up as I
point you and say stood up that
gentleman there because you gave me a
nice smile yeah you yeah one two that
boy there and the girl next to you you
look at me that’s you yet oh and you
three thank you thank you Maura the wife
of course
Mich mother oh one two three four five
things six come on stand up somebody
from this anybody up here that lady
there with the chin in her hands
yes you yes yes stand up please right
one two three four five six seven and we
need three more eight we need two more
that lady there Josephine the hockey
player thank you and one of the speakers
please write ten that was a classical
experiment I did ten bits of computation
I did one two three four five six seven
eight nine ten
I can’t characters actually 11 a quantum
computer in the same number of steps
will do how many how many of you would
have been standing up in the same number
of steps to ^ 10024 sit down please
thank you
that is one manifestation of what a
quantum computer will do and I’m gonna
Klaus everybody asked me those that
asked me what does it do want to know
whether it’s gonna break Bitcoin of
course it’s gonna break Bitcoin what
kind of question is that
bitcoins not special distributed
Ledger’s I saw now I’m gonna have a
hoard of Bitcoin people descending on me
so anything that involves a public key
anything that involves a public key is
open to encryption RSA 2048 go on the
Microsoft website it tells you that a
classical computer will take about a
billion years so by the time they’ve
solved the key the problem is gone a
quantum computer will solve that problem
in less than a minute so that’s one
manifestation of what it does I’m not
interested in encryption I’ll see what
I’m interested in drug delivery we
actually are more similar than we are
different at the fundamental level of
course things turn out different drug
delivery and the new materials that
enable us to do that for the first time
in human history we can go to the
profoundest mystery of what this
universe is all about we will be able to
encode the genome in its entirety for
all eight billion people energy surplus
the way in which we store electricity
photovoltaic can
Berta’s fertilizers this is why this is
important our lifestyles will change our
children and I’m going to finish with
this because I actually I was meant to
do this on slide two and I forgot we’re
gonna do it anyway cuz I like this you
know if you had our or my dad and my
granddad who fought in Gallipoli and his
dad and three or four before is you only
need six or seven of them to get back to
the spinning jenny right well I’ve got a
son we’ve got two sons actually my
oldest is 12 and by the time he’s my age
at 25 there is if he forgot it doesn’t
matter by the time he’s my age all of
this will have happened we’ll all
probably still be alive that’s why it’s
important and it is happening this is
not science fiction and this disruption
this is the disrupter of all disruptions
if you’re planning something today you
need to know government’s no large
organizations no those of you that who
want to ask you if you own stock in
Google or in Microsoft or in IBM these
organizations are investing more in
quantum computing than anything else
this is happening now this is the end of
my little 18 minutes and I’m going to
leave you with a thought as people say
to me so what can we do what will these
things do to us and no matter what I say
I never I never hit the essence and I’ll
tell you why I don’t because actually I
don’t know what we’re gonna do nobody
knows so a gentleman by the name of
Newton no the Cambridge man said I seem
to any Oxford people in here I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on a
seashore and diverting myself in now and
again finding a smoother pebble or a
prettier shell than ordinary whilst the
great ocean of truth lay undiscovered
before me we don’t know what quant
computers will do because up until now
we’ve never had them and you especially
the younger ones will be the ones that
will tell me what we can do with quantum
computers there are three quantum
computers in existence today before 2024
all of our lives will be impacted by
quantum computing if you have not spent
time learning about this learn about it
now
thank you very much indeed
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
even for a few years but I’ve got to
know him better because of my
involvement with the foundation and I
cannot resist the plug if you want to
learn more about the foundation and you
were inspired by what Stephen said and
during that video he actually it didn’t
quote the thing that he’s certainly
become best known for as far as I’m
concerned picking up on the theme of
many of the brilliant speakers that
we’ve already had you know don’t look
down don’t look down where’s mich don’t
look down look up at the stars you know
what better could you have from Steven
anyway my name is Ilias Khan and I’m the
founder and the chief executive of
Cambridge quantum computing and I’m the
husband of my beautiful wife who’s down
there and some of my friends are here
and I have the task of talking about
quantum computing now I think that it
inspires the phrase inspires a number of
different conflicting emotions and those
emotions I think could be curiosity
there might be a little bit of mystery
you know the idea that quantum mechanics
can manifest itself in the context of a
computers a little bit disquieting the
idea that AI well of course it’s not AI
at the moment it’s just data
manipulation so perhaps were on the cusp
of real artificial intelligence what the
hell is it and part of my mission three
years ago I together with a few friends
started what is now a business called
Cambridge quantum computing of course
but our view at the time in twenty
fourteen was that we were looking
forward and we thought that in ten years
time so the mid-2020s there might be the
first prototypes of quantum computing
and what we wanted to do was take the
tools the quantum algorithms and the
software that’s needed to allow these
big lumps of metal to do stuff that’s
actually useful we thought that by the
middle of the 2020s
the first prototypes would be here well
of course we were wrong by some massive
margin and as of today I keep an index
there are 17 credible well-funded
projects that are building quantum
computers there are at least three
quantum computers in existence today and
I spend an increasing amount of time
especially in this last six months or so
telling people about quantum computers
and I strongly believe that you have to
take the mystery out of the quantum
machine and I’ll let you into the little
secret
not even Steven knows how they work he
doesn’t he doesn’t because nobody does
but just because we don’t know how they
work doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t know
what we’re going to be in for all of us
in this room even at my young age right
you’re banished back back of the class
even at my young age I’m going to live
through a revolution you are going to
live through a revolution and that’s
what we need to talk about and oh gosh
right you don’t have to look at that if
you feel dizzy I want to take you back a
little bit to the Apollo 11 mission 1969
for those of you that haven’t got quick
access to you Wikipedia Buzz Aldrin
Armstrong there was a computer that
helped the spacecraft get all the way to
the moon land take off come back safely
that computer it doesn’t matter how many
gigs of memory it had it doesn’t matter
what size it was it doesn’t really
matter how it was engineered and put
together it was a Turing machine for
those of you that are interested Alan
Turing came up with the AI
here in the mid 30s that there was a way
to compute and allow those computations
to help us and then they became these
machines in Princeton and evac univac
there we had these big things with
massive vacuums that were on and off and
the on represented a1 and the off
represented a zero and if you
amalgamated these ones and zeros hey
presto you get a man on the moon and ten
years later IBM came up with the
personal computer and that personal
computer had hundreds of times more
processing power than the machine that
sent the Apollo 11 mission open then
another 10 years later we saw a picture
earlier of this big brick of a phone I
was too young to know that I have no
knowledge about the 1980s but suddenly
this processing power went on and on and
on but the fact is that all of that is a
mere blip in a thousand years time
nobody’s going to remember that what
will they remember they will remember
the Industrial Revolution right who’s
gonna tell me spinning jenny what year
I’ll tell you I’ll tell ya what
definitely was around then 1764 and what
was the impact of the spinning jenny
right northwest of England Lancashire it
was iconic when human beings stopped
having to lift things we suddenly could
rely not on other animals like mules or
slaves but on machines and we started
parallel processing and a little bit
down the road then what happened steam
engines came before you knew it there
was automobiles and then we were
pilfering the earth for hydrocarbons we
had aeroplanes and then cheering came
along the next revolution is the one
that matters because we are on the brink
in fact we’re into it right now quantum
computers and quantum computing is a way
that nature computes
now we’re going to do a
quantum-mechanical exercise right here
within the allotted TEDx 18 minutes so
those of you that are already thinking
about leaving leave now and the rest are
going to be part of the competition now
give you a little bit of context the
term quantum computing came about in the
late 70s and early 1980s was a fantastic
scientist one of the Great’s not as
great as Steven but nevertheless right
up there Richard Fineman Nobel laureate
and coincidentally at about the same
time David Deutsch who’s in Oxford
thought of this idea as well but he was
talking about parallel universes and
multiverses and we’re definitely not
going there today so we’re going to
stick to richard fineman and richard
fineman was looking at how free energy
dissipation affects computation now this
was a topic that is still of great
importance all of you will have a hot
iphone after a little while free energy
now it does matter what it is comes in
electricity and it turns it around and
you have a computation of what comes out
the other way as an output and in the
middle you lose a lot of energy no
matter what you do where you drive in a
car or having a computer to do work for
you free energy dissipation is an
interesting topic and Fineman had a
thought experiment he said what if we
computed them the way that nature
computes and we’ve got at the back of
our cortex a few billion neurons which
in turn have trillions and trillions of
synaptic charges are going in your area
doctor sorry I will not trade in your
turf but the energy that goes into that
is infinitesimally you can’t even light
a light bulb with it or a very very very
light and low-energy light bulb if you
try to replicate that you’d need enough
energy to power 10,000 homes so why can
nature do that in the back of your brain
in a leaf a leaf takes light and what
does it convert it to amongst other
things oxygen
and he does it with such efficiency so
Fineman said if we could compute using
atoms we would compute as nature compute
for 30 years more than 30 years we’ve
been wondering and dreaming of whether
we can actually do what nature does will
nature allow us to do it and I’m gonna
just read we’ve just broken another rule
attendees at the end is 1985 in fact
I’ve got a little thing there of the
article easily google-able and if you
haven’t yet ready you should richard
fineman 1985 and at the end of this
article which was actually in turn the
speech that he’d made a few months
earlier he says at any rate it seems to
me that the laws of physics present no
barrier to reducing the size of
computers until bits are the size of
atoms and quantum behavior holds
dominant sway now it’s that last bit
quantum behavior holds dominance way
it’s not written up there don’t try and
read it there what does that mean what
it means see the universe in its
indivisible elements and the
infinitesimal level works on rules that
are different that you and I and
everybody else as macroscopic operates
on now just to go back to a computer for
a second for those of you that don’t
recognize this anybody over the age of
35 this is an abacus
this is no different from well I won’t
take it out because I can’t find it
you’ve all got smartphones your
smartphone is that a kid you know inside
your smartphone there are billions and
billions of transistors and the
transistors either on or off
we’ve just been using abacuses but a
quantum computer will actually for the
first time allow us to compute in a
parallel manner and the reason it will
allow us to do that
is a premise that I’d like just to ask
you to put into your mind right now
imagine for a second the most powerful
computer that you can think of it
doesn’t matter you might you know some
of you might get turned on by thinking
of this big huge machines the men
amongst you the rest of you might think
of what the computer could do it doesn’t
matter just think of a big big big
computer the most powerful now multiply
that a billion times you might get close
to thinking then of what ultimately a
quantum computer will do and it doesn’t
matter where there were four years away
or eight years away or ten years away
we’re very very close and the original
prototypes are here already and the
reason is that they’re different they’re
not just faster the laws as I said
earlier of quantum mechanics allow us to
do something that we’ve never been able
to do app until now now there are two
tags superposition and tangle Minh it
doesn’t matter it’s another language
every discipline has its own language my
job is to lift us up away from the
language and I want to show you tell you
ensure you and hopefully share with you
what that means so we’re going to do the
quantum mechanical experiment before I
get kicked off the stage right so I
don’t believe in volunteers so I’m going
to pick people right
I’d like ten people to stand up as I
point you and say stood up that
gentleman there because you gave me a
nice smile yeah you yeah one two that
boy there and the girl next to you you
look at me that’s you yet oh and you
three thank you thank you Maura the wife
of course
Mich mother oh one two three four five
things six come on stand up somebody
from this anybody up here that lady
there with the chin in her hands
yes you yes yes stand up please right
one two three four five six seven and we
need three more eight we need two more
that lady there Josephine the hockey
player thank you and one of the speakers
please write ten that was a classical
experiment I did ten bits of computation
I did one two three four five six seven
eight nine ten
I can’t characters actually 11 a quantum
computer in the same number of steps
will do how many how many of you would
have been standing up in the same number
of steps to ^ 10024 sit down please
thank you
that is one manifestation of what a
quantum computer will do and I’m gonna
Klaus everybody asked me those that
asked me what does it do want to know
whether it’s gonna break Bitcoin of
course it’s gonna break Bitcoin what
kind of question is that
bitcoins not special distributed
Ledger’s I saw now I’m gonna have a
hoard of Bitcoin people descending on me
so anything that involves a public key
anything that involves a public key is
open to encryption RSA 2048 go on the
Microsoft website it tells you that a
classical computer will take about a
billion years so by the time they’ve
solved the key the problem is gone a
quantum computer will solve that problem
in less than a minute so that’s one
manifestation of what it does I’m not
interested in encryption I’ll see what
I’m interested in drug delivery we
actually are more similar than we are
different at the fundamental level of
course things turn out different drug
delivery and the new materials that
enable us to do that for the first time
in human history we can go to the
profoundest mystery of what this
universe is all about we will be able to
encode the genome in its entirety for
all eight billion people energy surplus
the way in which we store electricity
photovoltaic can
Berta’s fertilizers this is why this is
important our lifestyles will change our
children and I’m going to finish with
this because I actually I was meant to
do this on slide two and I forgot we’re
gonna do it anyway cuz I like this you
know if you had our or my dad and my
granddad who fought in Gallipoli and his
dad and three or four before is you only
need six or seven of them to get back to
the spinning jenny right well I’ve got a
son we’ve got two sons actually my
oldest is 12 and by the time he’s my age
at 25 there is if he forgot it doesn’t
matter by the time he’s my age all of
this will have happened we’ll all
probably still be alive that’s why it’s
important and it is happening this is
not science fiction and this disruption
this is the disrupter of all disruptions
if you’re planning something today you
need to know government’s no large
organizations no those of you that who
want to ask you if you own stock in
Google or in Microsoft or in IBM these
organizations are investing more in
quantum computing than anything else
this is happening now this is the end of
my little 18 minutes and I’m going to
leave you with a thought as people say
to me so what can we do what will these
things do to us and no matter what I say
I never I never hit the essence and I’ll
tell you why I don’t because actually I
don’t know what we’re gonna do nobody
knows so a gentleman by the name of
Newton no the Cambridge man said I seem
to any Oxford people in here I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on a
seashore and diverting myself in now and
again finding a smoother pebble or a
prettier shell than ordinary whilst the
great ocean of truth lay undiscovered
before me we don’t know what quant
computers will do because up until now
we’ve never had them and you especially
the younger ones will be the ones that
will tell me what we can do with quantum
computers there are three quantum
computers in existence today before 2024
all of our lives will be impacted by
quantum computing if you have not spent
time learning about this learn about it
now
thank you very much indeed
[Music]
[Applause]
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