Why we should be afr aid of quantum computing
0Why we should be afr.aid of quantum computing,
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and others have been warning about the harm runaway artificial intelligence could do to humanity in the future. But another technology may pose a more imminent threat: quantum computing.
Quantum computers are straight out of science fiction. Take the “traveling salesman problem,” where a salesperson has to visit a specific set of cities, each only once, and return to the first city by the most efficient route possible. As the number of cities increases, the problem becomes exponentially complex. It would take a laptop computer 1,000 years to compute the most efficient route between 22 cities, for example. A quantum computer could do this within minutes, possibly seconds.
Unlike classic computers, in which information is represented in 0s and 1s, quantum computers rely on particles called quantum bits, or qubits. These can hold a value of 0 or 1 or both values at the same time — a superposition denoted as “0+1.” They solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results. It’s equivalent to opening a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence simultaneously.