Episode 32: The Rise of Quantum Technology

In this episode of Engineering the Future, host Jerome James explores the fascinating world of quantum technology and how it's poised to change the engineering industry. 

Joined by guest Tina Deckker, a lawyer with a  master's degree in quantum computing, they delve into the future of this ground-breaking technology, from its potential to disrupt current cryptography to its impact on various industries, including communications, automotive and material science. 

Tune in to learn about the seismic shifts caused by quantum technology and the exciting opportunities it presents for engineers of today and tomorrow.

Transcript

[Start of recorded material 00:00:00]

Jerome James:  This episode of Engineering the Future is brought to you by MemberPerks for OSPE, helping engineers save money on everything from electronics and food to apparel and home improvements. Visit MemberPerks for OSPE before you shop and enjoy exclusive savings on brand names, both online and in store. 

Voiceover:        This podcast is brought to you by OSPE, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, the advocacy body for profession professional engineers in the engineering community in Ontario. 

Jerome James:  Welcome to Engineering the Future, a podcast presented to you by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. I am your host Jerome James. Today we’re venturing into the mind-bending realm of quantum technology and exploring the seismic shifts it’s causing in today’s engineering landscape. We’ll also be discussing the exciting opportunities it presents in both seasoned engineers and the bright minds of tomorrow. 

Our guest today bridges the worlds of law and quantum engineering. Tina Dekker is a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and technology law. She also holds a degree in nanotechnology engineering from the University of Waterloo and she has completed her master’s degree with the Institute for Quantum Computing. Tina, welcome to Engineering the Future. 

Tina Dekker:    Thank you. It’s great to be here and I’m really looking forward to our conversation today about quantum computing. My goal today is to make it accessible and understandable so that our listeners regardless of their background will be able to maybe learn something interesting about this exciting field. 

Jerome James:  Well that sounds like a laudable goal. Let’s make it happen. 

So let’s jump right into it. Tina, the world of law and quantum engineering seems like strange bed fellows. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how they’re connected? 

Tina Dekker:    Yeah. For sure. So as you mentioned I started in engineering, I started in nanotech and then I did a master’s degree. And in most of that time I had no concept of ever becoming a lawyer or entering law. But yeah, during my master’s degree I started getting interested more on the commercialization aspect of technology and of quantum technology and I came across the idea of, like, patents and being a patent agent and intellectual property and what that means for creators of technology and developers of technology. And so I ended up speaking with some lawyers and some patent agents to get an idea. And that left me on this path of sort of approaching the quantum industry from more of this business and commercialization aspect focusing on intellectual property. 

And then as I went to law school, so I went to the University of Ottawa, which has a really robust law and technology program, I realized that there’s also a lot of interesting issues and problems that need to be addressed on the policy side with respect to technology and so it was a really nice way for me to actually merge my background in engineering and in specifically my experience working with quantum devices in the quantum field and merging that with my studies in law and kind of understanding how I can – and bring them together, which is what brings me here today. 

Jerome James:  Great. And for those who are listening who aren’t familiar with quantum technology, can you explain how quantum computing differs from classical computing? And what potential applications does it offer to working engineers and future engineers? 

Tina Dekker:    Well I’ll start by explaining that when we talk about something that’s quantum versus something that’s classical we’re really referring to which scientific equations, rules and phenomena govern how that thing behaves in the world. 

So when we talk about something that’s quantum it’s referring to things that involve quantum physics, or you’ll sometimes the term quantum mechanics. And this typically applies at a very small scale. And I’ll make a side note here, like, one of the reasons I got involved in quantum because of my nanoengineering degree, which involves studying matter at a very small scale – so on the scale of, like, a billionth of a meter, 10 to the scale of minus 9, this is a scale of things like atoms and molecules, and this is where quantum properties start to become really relevant. 

So coming back to it in terms of a quantum computer and what that means, quantum computer is quantum because it is leveraging quantum mechanical phenomena to compute things and it does this using what we call cubits. And so if you Google quantum computing that’s usually where the conversation starts – well, we have these things called cubits. And so cubits are a core hardware component of a quantum computer. So it’s a physical thing or a structure that exhibits quantum behaviour, and we sometimes call this a quantum system. And this can be something like a subatomic particle, so an electron or an atom or something with, you know, properties that fit into the quantum physics model. 

And so there are different ways that you can actually realize a cubit physically and, you know, that’s one of the things that companies are really trying to do is find out, you know, which physical implementation is going to work best. But the essential property of cubit that allows them to be used for computation is that we can actually prepare them to be in a state of zero or one or prepare it as something in between zero and one where it has properties of both and we call this a superposition. So a cubit can be prepared in a superposition of both zero and one. 

And if we contrast this with classical computing, we have a classical bit which can be zero or one. You know? It can be heads or tails if you’re flipping a coin as an analogy. But you can’t really have anything in between. 

And so the consequence of using cubits is that we have computational power that scales differently in a quantum computer than the computational power of a class computer. 

So a quantum computer scales exponentially based on the number of cubits and this exponential computing power enables quantum computers to solve certain mathematically complex problems more efficiently than a classical computer. 

Jerome James:  So it’s not that they’re solving different problems; they’re just solving problems more efficiently. Or are they actually structured in a way that they can solve problems that a classical computer could never solve? 

Tina Dekker:    So it’s both, actually. I think the easiest way. So, like, if everything that I said just went over the heads of our listeners, which is understandable, quantum computer is basically a new type of supercomputer. So we’re unlikely to ever use it for things like checking email but we can use it to solve new problems – things that we weren’t able to solve before – and we – in some cases we can use it to solve problems that we can solve using classical methods but that are very, you know, difficult to do or resource-intensive to do. So it’s both. 

Jerome James:  So what are the current challenges and limitations of quantum computing? How might these impact its integration into the real world through engineering projects or might be overcome in the future? 

Tina Dekker:    So, this is an important topic because we’re seeing a lot of big promises in media about what quantum computing will deliver, but far less information on how and whether we can achieve these goals. So the reality is that there are some significant technical hurdles or challenges that have to be overcome to realize quantum computers with the capabilities we’re very excited about. And when we talk about applications of quantum computing, I mean, the list is almost endless. I mean, we have things in material science to, like, logistics and optimization. I mean, at the end of the day, quantum computers are really good at solving problems that require a lot of iteration or have a lot of possibilities, which you can imagine touches on a lot of different possible fields or areas and a lot of different industries. 

And so we’re seeing a lot of promises. A lot of, you know, quantum computing is going to help us tackle climate change. You know? We can develop better batteries; we can, you know, simulate things better. And, you know, I’m confident that we are going to realize some of these goals. But it’s not quite so easy as that. 

And so I’ll start by saying that, you know, one really important aspect that I think a lot of engineers will understand is that a computer is a lot more than its hardware. You know? We have hardware and software. And right now in media there’s a lot of focus about how many cubits – the next quantum processor from the big tech companies has. So, you know, have we reached 100 cubits, have we reached 150 cubits. But that’s really only part of the story. 

So while the number of available cubits is certainly relevant to computation – I mean, I just mentioned, you know, it gives us that exponential computing power – what’s more important is actually the quality of the cubits. Quantum systems are really sensitive to their environment. So even just, you know, fabricating and creating a cubit physically takes already a lot more effort and work than what it takes for us to create our typical classical computing hardware. And this can include the supporting infrastructure as well. So most of the quantum processors that we have today either rely on cryogenics, so being at a very low temperature, or complex optics. So there there’s a lot going on just to, you know, realize the cubit and prepare it in the state so that it can do computation. 

And then once you have the – oh sorry. Go ahead. 

Jerome James:  Oh yeah. No. You’re on a roll there. I just want to understand the idea around these cubits and the quality. 

Tina Dekker:    Sure. 

Jerome James:  You’re saying that we have systems that have up to a couple hundred cubits right now. What is the state of the art of a system today that’s doing calculations? 

Tina Dekker:    Yeah. So right now we’re in the NISQ area – NISQ – noisy intermediate state of quantum computing – and so that’s around, like, the 100 to 200 cubit range. And so this is what a lot of the big companies like IBM and Google, their quantum processors are in this range and moving upwards. They all have, you know, some pretty grand plans about accelerating the number of cubits they can add to their processors. And that’s great. 

But there’s actually a really interesting paper that came out earlier this year that – on the archives – that highlighted how many cubits and what they’re using for and in most cases for actual computations that people are doing, and this is happening mostly on the research side, you’re only using – you’re using less than that. Like, I don’t remember the exact numbers but I want to say it was in, like, the 10 to 50 range for the types of calculations and simulations that they’re doing in the research space right now. 

 And so it comes back to this idea that, you know, we can have 150 cubits but, you know, if they’re not high quality or, you know, there can be other factors that come into play, you might not actually be getting effectively 100 cubits or 150 cubits; it might be less than that. And so that’s one of the challenges. 

Jerome James:  Right. Right. That sounds like a big challenge. How many cubits are required to, say, destroy cryptography as we know it today? 

Tina Dekker:    Yes. The big question. My understanding is it needs to be on the order of around a thousand cubits. I don’t know the number off the top of my head; I have to admit. So we’re not there yet, is the answer. But to put that into context I know some of the companies are expecting to reach the 1,000-cubit mark sometime in the next five years – that’s their plan. Whether they get there, I mean, we’ll see. And so, you know, I think most people would say that probably a bit – even if they reach that number, you know, whether they can actually break our current encryption frameworks, it seems unlikely that that’s going to happen in the next few years. But we have to entertain the possibility. 

And what I like to say is that, you know, we do have brilliant engineers and scientists working on these problems. So even if the predicted timeline is later, you know, there could be a breakthrough discovery that we need to be prepared for. 

So, yeah, so we’re not there yet but we’re the scientists and researchers, they’re working towards it. 

Jerome James:  Absolutely. So those are the technical challenges. What about the ethical or legal challenges or legal conundrums that surround this new technology? 

Tina Dekker:    Yeah. There’s a lot to unpack there. And it’s not just with quantum computing but I think all quantum technologies, we have quantum sensors and communications, for example. And when it comes to the legal and ethical side of things I think we’re falling into a similar trap that what we’re seeing with AI. So there’s a lot of investment going into the quantum industry right now and research and it’s generating a very competitive R&D environment. And it’s in these situations that we see ethics and responsibility sort of cast aside in favour of being a first mover. 

And what’s happening is that, you know, quantum computing has a very broad application space and so it can touch on a lot of different industries. And there’s this sense that whoever is the first to sort of realize some of these promised applications are going to reap the most benefits from it. And this is actually creating a very interesting geopolitical climate globally as well because there’s a lot of tension between countries who want to collaborate and, you know, foster international collaborations because the quantum community is diverse and is global. But it’s competing a bit with the sort of national security aspects and more nationalistic focus of, you know, being an independent nation with, you know, our own quantum computing capability so that we can realize the most economic benefits for our country above others. 

And so there’s a lot to unpack here. I co-authored a very long paper, actually, on this subject that published earlier this year. What we have to be conscious of is the inequalities that this is creating. Right? So if we have the sense of first movers, right? We’re already seeing that there are some countries who have and some countries who don’t. And there’s a big risk that countries who are already, you know, behind on technological development are going to be even further behind as quantum computing becomes integrated more and more into real-world applications. So these are things we need to be alive to in terms of what the, you know, societal impact is, what the global impact is and what the consequences of that are. 

Is there a quantum computer race right now? Who are the big players in this race? Is it nation states or giant tech companies? 

Tina Dekker:    Yeah. So the notion of a race, I mean, a lot of people say that there is a race right now. I’m not a big fan of characterizing it that way because I think, you know, to my point about the legal and ethical aspects, I think it leads us to a lot of sort of – [audio ends]

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