The Exchanges

Q methods like machine learning can't because with machine learning work with the predictive analytics and the machine and the, um, optimization side of AI, that's been something that we've seen in market for a long time. It's done a pretty good job. So when it comes to the advantage that quantum might have over some of those traditional processes, what do you see and what do you, your customers see?

A So let me start by giving you a concrete example or two of, uh, customer applications that, uh, we have in the market today. Uh, and then maybe I'll come back and share some thoughts on, uh, how AI and quantum relate to one another and potentially work together synergistically. So let's take BASF, one of the world's largest chemical companies. Um, they need to fill orders For customers, for a variety of different types of chemicals that frankly are created by, um, a manufacturing process in their facilities, starting with a variety of raw materials that come together to form those chemicals. Okay. The challenge is to, uh, optimize how the plant floor operates to fill those orders as quickly and efficiently as possible. Um, leveraging our quantum computers, they have been able to reduce the time required to do the production scheduling from what was 10 hours down to seconds. Okay. So a very significant reduction in the time to do the scheduling. Well, if the computer is running for 10 seconds versus 10 hours, that's consuming a lot less electricity. So there you have an example in the real world of the use of quantum computing to deliver business value and reduce electricity consumption. Another example is a large mobile carrier in Japan, NTT Docomo, has used our quantum computers to optimize cell tower resources. Basically, how the cell towers interact with the mobile phones to…

AI assessment note: “leveraging our quantum computers, they have been able to reduce the time”

Q It's your words. Um, so there's so much attention to quantum, like we talked about earlier, and there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, maybe we, we talked about earlier, people are putting out there, not so credible. How do we sort the hype from the truth?

A That's a hard question to answer. Um, at the end of the day, I think you need to, uh, ask questions and, um, kind of apply judgment. If you hear ridiculous statements, like numbers like, I don't know, you know, A million cubits in three years. I mean, it doesn't quite even pass the red face test. But I think it boils down to asking questions. If, if you've got somebody, um, kind of giving a presentation and throwing out what you think are outlandish numbers, and they won't let you ask questions, That would raise a red flag in my mind, right? You need to be able to ask questions. You need to be able to drill down. You need to be able to come up with an informed opinion. Get academics engaged in the discussion to help evaluate what you're hearing. Not enough of that is going on right now. I think there's this tendency to just let people say whatever they want to say, and, you know, maybe it'll all be good for the industry. I don't think that's the right answer. I think, you know, empty promises are, create problems, right? And we must, we must hold everybody accountable for, you know, what they're saying and what they're doing, and there has to be proof points. When, when we talk about something like quantum supremacy, we publish the paper. We publish the data. Anybody can go out and recreate the results. Right? Um, you know, you, you have to just make sure that there's data to s…

AI assessment note: “you have to just make sure that there's data to support the claims”

Q All right. Now help us dream a bit before we leave here. Uh, when you talk a little bit about the potential for this technology, personalized medicine, uh, new chemistry, what, what about this technology enables those type of things?

A Yeah. So, um, We today don't have enough computational power in classical computers to basically, uh, simulate and determine properties of molecular structures. That's just beyond the reach of classical. So the only way we can develop new drugs is by, um, kind of making them. And testing them, right? We can't do it digitally. We can't do it computationally. Quantum, uh, classical computers just don't have the computational power to be able to do that. Quantum computers do. What this means is that we'll be able to explore new molecular structures, um, much faster, much more efficiently than is possible today, allowing us to find These amazing new drugs or, you know, amazing new, um, um, materials, uh, that can create all kinds of interesting things to benefit society.

AI assessment note: “Quantum computers do. What this means is that we'll be able to explore new molecular structures”

Q And then talk a little bit about just the mechanics of this. I mean, we talk about quantum, you know, is it like, you know, deeper into the particles of matter that we don't fully understand yet? And how is it possible that something can be, you know, both a zero and a one at the same time?

A Yeah. So that's the nature of quantum mechanics. Uh, you know, uh, it's been called spooky. Uh, it's very difficult for most people to understand, frankly, myself included. Um, but it's proven to be the way the universe operates on the micro scale. So there are many, many interesting properties of quantum mechanics that we are bringing into The computing environment. I talked about superposition. Another one is entanglement. Very interesting. If I perform some action on one qubit, that can impact another qubit that might be very far away. That's entanglement, and we use that as a part of how quantum computers operate. Now, as far as the physical realization of quantum computers, there are a number of different underlying Technological approaches that are being pursued today in the development of quantum computers. One is superconducting. Um, the other is trapped ion. Another is neutral atom. Another is photonics. So there are many different technological approaches that are being used to pursue the development of quantum computers. Each of these Can be built in such a way that we can introduce the quantum mechanical characteristics like superposition, like entanglement, like tunneling, and use those characteristics to solve hard computational problems. Interestingly, there is a big debate going on right now around which is the best technological approach for leveraging quantum …

AI assessment note: “proven to be the way the universe operates on the micro scale.”

Q Now, one bit of news that caught my attention is that you're announcing a partnership with Andrel, the defense technology company. Uh, all these different scenarios ran through my head of what that could be. Is it trying to find new types of weapons? Is it logistics? Is it simulations? What is that partnership going to be like?

A So, it, it's trying to help the U.S. government and the Department of War solve their complex computational problems in support of national defense. So, um, you know, up until now, the US government has been mostly focused on long-term research around quantum, but our annealing quantum computers are able to solve hard problems today, including hard national defense problems. So this is about working to really help address Some of those hard problems leveraging quantum systems right now today, and I think, you know, ah, you heard from Dale and from Matthew that, um, you know, they were surprised at how capable our systems were, how much they are able to do right now today in addressing some of these challenging problems.

AI assessment note: “trying to help the U.S. government... solve their complex computational problems”

Q had this machine learning boom. And I'm just wondering, because we're hearing so much about quantum now and its potential, is there something that's happening in the world of quantum computing that is a similar reason for why this Technology could break out. Like what is the parallel for the fact that there's like been more data and more compute and machine learning? What is the parallel with quantum computing?

A Yeah. So the thing that everybody is focused on with respect to quantum, uh, computing is what's, uh, been called quantum supremacy. The idea is can a quantum computer solve a problem that cannot be solved classically period. Now there have been a number of attempts To demonstrate quantum supremacy. Some of them have held up. Some of them have not. But in every case, the computation has been a contrived problem of no practical real world value. But There is exactly one demonstration of true quantum supremacy on a useful real world problem that was done by D wave by our company. Uh, it was published in, uh, the peer reviewed journal science about a year ago. What we did was we demonstrated that our quantum computers are able to compute properties of materials in minutes. That would take nearly a million years on the fastest supercomputers in the world. So that's true quantum supremacy. We are performing a computation on our quantum computer that cannot be solved classically, but importantly, it's on a useful real world problem in the area of material simulation. And this is the first and frankly, still only demonstration Of supremacy on a useful real world problem. So we are at the point actually today where at least at D wave, we have quantum computers that have kind of, uh, made that transition to be able to demonstrate useful quantum supremacy. And that has also allowed us to…

AI assessment note: “thing that everybody is focused on with respect to quantum... is... quantum supremacy”