00:00Today on Yahoo Finance Future Focus, we are joined by Director of the IBM Research Lab
00:09in Zurich, Alessandro Curioni, to discuss quantum computing.
00:13Thank you and welcome to everybody.
00:15Now, Alessandro, quantum computing seems to have been stuck in this perpetual development
00:21stage.
00:22Well, that's my feeling anyway.
00:23Now, will it ever have its chat GPT moment?
00:25And if so, what commercial applications are there for this technology?
00:29Quantum computing is one of the two major transformation and technology in computing
00:36that we are going to have in this decade.
00:39The other being, you know, the new AI.
00:41Think about, for example, simulating nature, right?
00:45It means that you can do a better material design to do better drug discovery, understand
00:51how matters interact with other matters, okay?
00:54So new therapeutics, a new way to cure diseases that today are very difficult.
01:00Another field of application, global optimization, complex optimization problems.
01:05Quantum computers are going to make this type of optimization easier.
01:10And you know where this is important.
01:12Optimization in logistic, optimization in finance, optimization where you have to take
01:17any difficult decision that require, you know, to optimize a different degree of freedom.
01:25And the third one that, in my opinion, is going to be the most exciting, it's connected
01:31to machine learning.
01:32The stronger and broader impact, in my opinion, is going to come exactly from the synergy
01:40between AI and quantum.
01:43What kind of risks could quantum computing bring to global finance?
01:47Quantum computers are going to be able to create this cryptography.
01:52And as a result of this, all our sensitive data will be exposed, health care data, financial
01:58data, even the digital signatures of our contracts could be forged, okay?
02:04When this is going to happen, we don't know, but we know that when we will have quantum
02:11computers powerful enough, this is going to happen.
02:14What effect would this have on blockchain technology?
02:17Could it potentially make blockchain technology obsolete?
02:20What quantum computers is going to be able to attack is the crypto technology that we
02:26use today, okay?
02:28In the meantime, while we were developing quantum computers, we have also studied alternative
02:37algorithms, crypto algorithm, that we call it quantum safe, that cannot be attacked by
02:44quantum computers.
02:45We know the maturity of the machines that we create, we test and we put on the cloud.
02:50And we do know that this machine, probably before the end of this decade, will be powerful
02:58enough to break the standard crypto technology that is used today.
03:05What is Q Day?
03:07Is it going to be a threat to global finance?
03:10Could you just explain Q Day, please?
03:13People and the community is speaking about a Q Day, you know, a day where from that day
03:21on, we will have a quantum machine that are able to break the cryptographic key.
03:26I will say that we will have more than one Q Days.
03:30And we will have more and a different profile of risk for different institutions.
03:37When we will have, you know, the first machine, very probably is going to be one machine created
03:43by one institution, okay?
03:45We will not have thousands of machines.
03:48So probably this one machine is not going to attack my bank account or the financial
03:54systems, but you know, we'll have other type of uses, right?
03:58Where do you think that one machine is going to come from?
04:01Is Europe and America going to produce that or could it be produced in China?
04:07It could be produced in every country that invested enough in quantum.
04:13Is there a funding gap, do you think, between the USA and China at this moment in time?
04:17The thing that I can say objectively, and you know, this is information that you can
04:20find is publicly available.
04:23There has been in the last couple of months, a report from the U.S. National Science Foundation
04:32is a report that states, you know, the amount of investment in R&D worldwide.
04:41And if you look at this report, and you look from 2000 to 2023, you see two lines that
04:49are going exponential in investment.
04:51And the two lines are United States and China.
04:56I do believe that with this information, you know, I don't have to infer more.
05:02So there is where most of the developments are happening.
05:06Alessandro, thank you very much for coming on this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future
05:10Focus.
05:11Thank you very much and talk to you soon.
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