Leading & Innovating with AI & Quantum
With developments in AI and quantum technology having crossed important thresholds in recent years, it is essential to understand i) how practically these technologies are converging and ii) where the convergence may lead.
I hosted Dr. Stefan Leichenauer, VP of Engineering and lead scientist at SandboxAQ, at a Forbes Technology Council event yesterday. The event primarily focused on i) but also touched on ii).
Practical Convergence
In the rich discussion, Dr. Leichenauer shared SandboxAQ’s approach, which centers around combining physics-aware computing currently enabled by CPUs and GPUs and in the future by QPUs, quantum sensors, and AI as a universal enabler.
In a world with so much hype on the quantum front, I appreciate the pragmatic approach that yet remains at the forefront of emerging technology being followed by SandboxAQ. Some takeaways I found interesting include:
- A unified ecosystem of technologies (summarized by the graphic above) is needed to solve critical problems in healthcare, global navigation systems, drug discovery, logistics, and finance, among other areas.
- Quantitative modeling is crucial in practically solving today what quantum computation is envisioned to solve tomorrow. SandboxAQ uses LQMs (Large Quantitative Models) often founded in the ‘hard’ sciences on a combination of precise equations (think physics, chemistry) and approximations and, in areas like finance, on equations and then simulations to model the real world.
- Simulations become especially important when it may be impossible to write an equation that summarizes a system's dynamics (think of a human's overall biology).
- This foundation generates synthetic data that AI can leverage to learn patterns and surface insights.
- LLMs are essentially backward-facing based on established research, while LQMs are forward-facing.
- Rather than being broadly applicable, even in what is considered to be sweet-spot target areas for quantum computing, a QPU (quantum processing unit) chip will be plugged into an algorithm to solve some specific quantum problem (for example, predicting how two atoms may interact), with AI managing the rest of the problem, sitting on top of the rest of the technology ecosystem.
The Future
In this session, I hazarded a guess on the technological future we may move towards.
Such a future is based on envisioning a ‘ubiquitous nexus’ brought about by the perception that an atom is an instance of a ubiquitous albeit underappreciated quantum computer that houses ‘intelligence’ by virtue of genetic-type code that establishes its behavior.
The substance of the boundary toward which technology will move is envisioned to be of the nature of the ubiquitous nexus.
The Forbes page and one-hour recording of the event is here:
