The next big thing in tech is likely to be the current big thing in tech: artificial intelligence. But other technologies are also making gains. One that could become more prominent in the coming year is quantum computing.
It’s pretty hard to explain quantum computing with brevity, but here goes. “Instead of bits, which are ones and zeros, a quantum computer also uses ones and zeros, but they can flip and be either a one or a zero at the same time,” said futurist Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Institute.
Webb said that allows quantum computers to solve supercomplex equations that would take a regular computer septillions of years (septillion being a number with 24 zeros).
It’s kind of been the holy grail of the computing world,” Webb said. “The problem is that these qubits are super-superfragile.
”Even slight mechanical vibrations cause qubits, or quantum bits, to make computation errors. But recently, advances in error correction have brought accurate quantum computing closer to reality, like a new processor Google unveiled this month called Willow.
The announcement has spurred a rush of excitement in the financial markets, according to Dan Ives, a tech industry analyst at Wedbush Securities.
“Because I think investors have realized, with AI, ultimately what could happen,” he said, “and everyone’s trying to find the next, call it ‘mini-Nvidia.’
Nvidia is the AI boom’s leading chipmaker and has generated gargantuan returns for investors.
Both technologies promise to help solve some of the world’s most difficult problems by, for instance, accelerating drug development, bioengineering and climate change solutions.
But unlike AI, regular people aren’t likely to see the effects of quantum computing in their lives immediately, per Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group.
“I think we’re talking, you know, five years at the earliest. Ten years is probably a more realistic time horizon,” he said.
On the time scale of septillions of years, though, that’s right around the corner.
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