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Quantum computing

Quantum computing

The quantum hype cycle, revisited

26 May 2022 Margaret Harris
Joyce Drohan on stage speaking to an audience at the Commercialising Quantum conference with a slide reading
Assessing the potential: Joyce Drohan, the chief data officer at Sanofi, was one of several executives from pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms who spoke at the Commercialising Quantum conference in London on 17 May. (Courtesy: Margaret Harris)

Quantum computers have incredible potential, but world-changing applications are still n years away. For some value of n, everyone in the quantum community agrees with this statement. Today’s quantum computers are noisy, with gate fidelities generally below 99%. They are also intermediate in scale, incorporating a little over 100 qubits at most. Getting from these noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices to the multi-million qubit, super-high-fidelity system required to model, say, a cytochrome P450 enzyme could take 10–15 years. A quantum computer capable of cracking RSA encryption (and thus breaking Internet commerce as we know it) is likely even further in the future.

Beneath the surface of this consensus, though, a definite split emerged among the luminaries at last week’s Commercialising Quantum conference, which took place in London under the auspices of The Economist newspaper. Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest point of disagreement within the event’s blue-chip list of speakers wasn’t the estimated value of n. Instead, it was the relative emphasis they placed on “incredible potential” versus “still n years away”.

Optimists and realists

In the realists’ corner were speakers like IBM Quantum vice president Jay Gambetta, who used his talk to lay out a roadmap full of challenging yet limited milestones: 2023 for solving a problem faster than it can be simulated classically; 2025 for building a chip with 4158 qubits, and so on. Meanwhile, on the optimists’ side, Catriona Campbell, the chief technology and innovation officer for EY in the UK and Ireland, touted a recent survey in which a whopping 48% of UK companies reported that quantum computing would play a role in their business by 2025.

Which of these views is closest to reality? The words “play a role in the business” are broad enough to cover many possibilities, and Campbell acknowledged in her talk that EY’s survey (carried out in partnership with the Financial Times) focused on a small number of innovative firms. Still, 2025 is only two and a half years away. Even if NISQ devices are – per Gambetta’s roadmap – somewhat less NISQ-y by then, Campbell’s timeline for incorporating them en masse into UK plc seems extraordinarily tight.

During a panel discussion at the same conference, Quantinuum president and chief operating officer Tony Uttley offered a way of squaring the circle. While Uttley estimated that only 12 companies will use quantum computing in their day-to-day operations this year, he also suggested that fully 69% are thinking of heading in that direction. If having someone in the C-suite thinking hard about a topic constitutes “playing a role in the business”, then Campbell may not be far off the mark.

Peak quantum hype?

The conference’s award for starry-eyed quantum optimism went to Haim Israel, the managing director of research at Bank of America. Midway through the in-person day on 17 May, Israel got up in front of a packed hotel ballroom and declared with a straight face that quantum computing will be “bigger than fire” – a statement that surely marks the pinnacle of quantum hype, if only because it would be difficult to top it.

For my money, the more interesting views about quantum’s commercial future came from representatives of the 69% of businesses that are thinking seriously about it, but not using it day-to-day. One of Uttley’s fellow panellists was Bijoy Sagar, chief information technology and digital transformation officer at the pharmaceutical firm Bayer AG. While Sagar worried aloud about the quantum “hype cycle” and warned that he was “not seeing commercial value yet on the scale of the investment”, he quickly added that this is not a criticism. “It takes time,” he observed. “That does not mean we don’t continue to invest.”

In Sagar’s opinion, the first use cases for quantum computing in pharma will include in silico clinical trials of new drugs. Identifying candidate molecules is, he said, “an imperfect science” with today’s methods, and bringing in a quantum computer to assist with this task would offer “tremendous value to humankind” even if the benefits were initially marginal. Another biotech expert, Amgen vice president for biologics Alan Russell, drove the point home. “Patients die while we wait, inventing new science,” Russell told a session focused on quantum applications and the enterprise journey. “There is no Schrödinger equation for biology.”

I last wrote about quantum hype in November 2019, as part of a Physics World supplement on classical as well as quantum computing. Since then, enthusiasm for quantum technologies has gone up several gears: although Israel’s “bigger than fire” comment was extreme, he is hardly alone in talking up this promising field. But the involvement of people like Sagar, Russell, and Peter Clark of Janssen, who spoke about using D-Wave Systems’ quantum annealer to solve a 14-amino-acid peptide problem, gives me reason to believe that there is indeed a “plateau of productivity” beyond the peak of quantum hype. I just hope I get the chance to see it – ideally by the glow of a few dozen bigger-than-fire quantum computers, standing in for candles on my birthday cake n years in the future.

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