Quantum Computers

Computers have transformed our lives in so many different aspects. They enabled us to calculate, store, input, and output information, and from those simple operations, the fields of programming, robotics, and AI emerged and continue to grow till today. We are approaching a new different technology that can further amplify our capabilities. This technology is quantum computing. As the name may suggest, this technology is associated with quantum mechanics that include subatomic particles such as electrons and photons. Those particles behave differently from the natural laws that we can observe and sense.

One of the characters of these particles is the superposition. It can be understood by knowing the simplest units that a computer consists of: bit. Each bit in the computer contains one particular value: either 0 or 1, and all the information processed in the computer are changed into values of zeros and ones that the computer can understand and operate accordingly. In a quantum computer, this binary identity in the bit is blurred. A quantum bit, which is a subatomic particle, does not have a definite value; its value is a spectrum of range between 0 and one. For example, a single quantum bit might have a 50% probability of 0 and 50% of 1. The same bit can have different possibilities such as 74% of 0 and 26% of 1. However, when this bit is read, it either gives 100% 0 or 100% 1. The power of this characteristic is that it exponentially increases the operations that can be done by a couple few bits. An implementation of this technology is keys that can have unbreakable encryption codes, which will reduce incidents of hacking institutions such as banks and personal information on internet accounts, and that will lead to safer networks all over the world.

Another interesting characteristic is the entanglement, which connects two or more quantum bits in a way that if any bit is changed, others change spontaneously and accordingly no matter what the distance between them is. Using this feature, we can know the information of a bit by looking at its connected one.

Both superposition and entanglement allow us to perform operations much more efficiently and quickly. Nevertheless, there was an experiment done by Shohini Chose’s team and presented in a Ted talk that blew my mind. She presented a coin flipping game that relies on luck. It starts when player A chooses to flip or not flip the coin. Then player B, not knowing the new face of the coin, chooses to whether flip or not flip the coin. Player A makes the same choice, and then the face of the coin is revealed. If the face matches the one that was first seen at the beginning of the game, player A wins. Otherwise, player B wins. When the quantum computer was player A, it did not choose a specific face for the coin: head or tail. The face was instead a combination of both, so it remains the same whether the player chooses to flip the coin or not. At the end of the game, the computer outputs the bit as the original face of the coin. By doing so, the computer almost won all the games in the experiment although the game has a winning chance of 50:50. Such a game made me think of the abilities robots and AI might have if their hardware became a quantum computer and programs similar to the game were designed for those them. Would they have the ability to trick others as humans do? Does this mean that they would acquire the conscious that we always brag about as humans? And would they be any different from us?

Shohini Chose Ted Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/shohini_ghose_quantum_computing_explained_in_10_minutes?language=en