Författare: Gemma Ware Host The Conversation Weekly Podcast The Conversa

Quantum computers have the potential to solve big scientific problems that are beyond the reach of today’s most powerful supercomputers, such as discovering new antibiotics or developing new materials.

But to achieve these breakthroughs, quantum computers will need to perform better than today’s best classical computers at solving real-world problems. And they’re not quite there yet. So what is still holding quantum computing back from becoming useful?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to quantum computing expert Daniel Lidar at the University of Southern California in the US about what problems scientists are still wrestling with when it comes to scaling up quantum computing, and how close they are to overcoming them.

Quantum computers harness the power of quantum mechanics, the laws that govern subatomic particles. Instead of the classical bits of information used by microchips inside traditional computers, which are either a 0 or a 1, the chips in quantum computers use qubits, which can be both 0 and 1 at the same time or anywhere in between. Daniel Lidar explains:

“Put a lot of these qubits together and all of a sudden you have a computer that can simultaneously represent many, many different possibilities …  and that is the starting point for the speed up that we can get from quantum computing.”

Faulty qubits

One of the biggest problems scientist face is how to scale up quantum computing power. Qubits are notoriously prone to errors – which means that they can quickly revert to being either a 0 or a 1, and so lose their advantage over classical computers.

Scientists have focused on trying to solve these errors through the concept of redundancy – linking strings of physical qubits together into what’s called a “logical qubit” to try and maximise the number of steps in a computation. And, little by little, they’re getting there.

In December 2024, Google announced that its new quantum chip, Willow, had demonstrated what’s called “beyond breakeven”, when its logical qubits worked better than the constituent parts and even kept on improving as it scaled up.

Lidar says right now the development of this technology is happening very fast:

“For quantum computing to scale and to take off is going to still take some real science breakthroughs, some real engineering breakthroughs, and probably overcoming some yet unforeseen surprises before we get to the point of true quantum utility. With that caution in mind, I think it’s still very fair to say that we are going to see truly functional, practical quantum computers kicking into gear, helping us solve real-life problems, within the next decade or so.”

Listen to Lidar explain more about how quantum computers and quantum error correction works on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware with assistance from Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Clips in this episode from Google Quantum AI and 10 Hours Channel.

You can find us on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via e-mail. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily e-mail here.

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Firefighters in Los Angeles continue to battle devastating wildfires that have killed at least 27 people and left thousands of homes destroyed. A new fire also provoked evacuation orders north of the city.

As Stacy Morford, environment and climate editor for The Conversation in the US, put it: “It’s every Californian’s nightmare.”

Today on The Conversation Weekly podcast, we’re revisiting an interview we ran in late 2023 with Emily Lindsey, a paleoecologist who works at the La Brea tar pits archaeological site in Los Angeles, about a wildfire warning from southern California’s ice age history.

Her research has helped shed light on a decades-old mystery about the extinction of large animals that provides some worrying lessons from history about the way humans, fire and ecosystems interact.

The interview with Emily Lindsey originally aired in November 2023. This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer of the show.

Newsclips in this episode are from CNN, CNN-News 18,
City News and
NBC News.

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From Gaza to Ukraine, today’s war zones are being used as testing grounds for new systems driven by artificial intelligence. Billions of dollars are now being pumped into AI weapons technology, much of it from Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Elke Schwarz, who studies the ethics of autonomous weapons systems, about what this influx of new investment means for the future of warfare.

 The insertion of AI into the defence industry is now attracting serious amounts of money. In 2024, the global military AI market was worth an estimated US$13.3 (£10.8) billion, with a projected growth to US$35 billion in the next seven years. Elke Schwarz, a reader in political theory at Queen Mary University of London in the UK, has just published new research which identifies that a key driver of the growth in military startup products, such as autonomous drones and other AI-enabled systems, is the influx of huge amounts of investment and influence from venture capital firms.

Venture capitalist investors have traditionally been wary of the defence sector. US military contracts tended to be won by a select few large companies and it was an industry deemed difficult to break into. Schwarz says it also remained “ethically frowned upon” to profiteer from conflict. But these “moral qualms were shifted aside very quickly”, she says, once it looked possible to disrupt the defence sector.

In 2016, technology start-up Palantir sued the US Army over what it said were procurement rules that excluded other companies from competing for a particular contract. In 2016, a judge ruled in favour of Palantir’s case and it subsequently secured a contract worth US$823 million. This paved the way for more start-ups to bid for contracts.  In December, the Financial Times reported that Palantir and another defence start-up called Anduril were in talks with around a dozen other tech companies, to create a consortium that would directly bid for US government work.

VC logic heads to the battlefield

Successful start-ups must grow fast and be ambitious if they’re to continue attracting rounds of investment. And this logic influences the narrative around start-ups promoting AI products, says Schwarz.

 You have to make big promises. You have to think big. You need to declare big intentions, possibly unobtainable, but really alluring kind of goals. We’re not saying it’s all fantasy, but certainly there’s an exaggeration to all of that … and you need to make yourself look indispensable, to create a vision of inevitability.

Using this language of inevitability, Schwarz says the most vocal start-up founders and their VC supporters claim that “warfare can only be won with more AI”. They argue that AI systems will allow wars to be won quicker and with more precision than in the past.

But her research questions the implications of inserting AI systems into military decision-making, and in particular, the kill chain. She points to a report by the investigative magazine +972 on Israel’s alleged use of AI-enabled systems in the Gaza war to help identify Hamas militants for targeting by possible air strikes. For Schwarz, such developments suggest that “there can be a tendency to use technologies in a rather indiscriminate, or imprecise fashion, regardless of how accurate they might be”.

And she worries that instead of solving conflict more humanely and with less violence, as AI military champions suggest, these systems might actually “lower the threshold to resort to force”.

Listen to the interview with Elke Schwarz on The Conversation Weekly podcast to find out more. A transcript is available on Apple Podcasts. You can also read an article she’s written for The Conversation’s Insights series about her research.

The Conversation put the points raised in this podcast, and an accompanying article for our Insights series, to the tech and venture capital firms named. They did not respond to our request for comment.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with help from Katie Flood. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from DW News, Channel 4 News, AlJazeera English, Pepperdine University, CNBC Television and the a16z American Dynamism Summit.

You can find us on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via e-mail. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily e-mail here.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. Läs mer…