Scientists in a secret building in Santa Barbara, California alphabet It is still working on one of the company’s most ambitious bets. They are trying to develop the world’s most advanced quantum computers.
“In the future, Quantum and AI could really complement each other back and forth,” said Julian Kelly, hardware director at Google Quantum AI.
Google has been seen as lagging behind the generative AI boom as it first invaded the mainstream with ChatGpt in late 2022.
Late last year, Google made it clear that it wouldn’t get caught up in the backfoot again. The company has announced a groundbreaking quantum computing chip called Willow. This states that it can solve benchmark problems more quickly than is possible with a classic computer, demonstrating that adding qubits to the chip exponentially reduces errors.
“It’s a milestone in this field,” said John Preskill, director of the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter. “We’ve been wanting to see it for quite some time.”
Willow may now give Google the opportunity to lead the next tech era. It could also be a way to turn research into commercial opportunities, especially as AI hits the data wall. Major AI models are already cutting through much data on the Internet, then running out of high quality data and training.
“One of the potential applications that can be thought of on quantum computers is to generate new data,” Kelly said.
He uses the example of Alphafold, an AI model developed by Google Deepmind that helps scientists study protein structure. The creator won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
“(Alphafold) trains data that is informed by quantum mechanics, but it’s not that common in reality,” Kelly says. “So what quantum computers can do is generate data that can train AI and provide a little more information about how quantum mechanics works.”
Kelly says Google thinks it’s only five years away from breakout practical applications that can only be solved on quantum computers. But for Google to take the next big platform shift, it will need to turn its breakthrough into business.
Check out the video for more details.
