Google Plans Next Steps in Quantum After Breakthrough

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00:00I think actually the best place to start is the basics of quantum computing versus accelerated

00:03or supercomputing. Because if you explain why that 13,000x performance is notable in simple

00:11terms, it gives some measure of why it's a piece of news this week. Absolutely. Today's computers,

00:17classical computers, they use bits, right? Zeros and ones. They use that to calculate. It's useful

00:23for a number of different problems across the world. However, quantum computing is different,

00:27uses a combination of zeros and ones at the same time. That enables access to different types of

00:32problems like the quantum echoes algorithm we announced this week. You have brought Willow

00:36with you. You've put it in an impenetrable, safe housing and casing. There it is on the desk in

00:42front of me. I read a lot of academic papers this week, and many point out that you didn't use a

00:48scalable or fault-tolerant chip for this demo. And so the argument follows that it would be a big

00:53challenge for you to commercialize or scale out that technology. Is that a fair concern from the

01:00academic community? That is the goal of quantum computing, to get to fault-tolerant quantum

01:04computing. Nobody is there yet. It is a long journey, but it is very exciting. We've been excited last

01:10December to announce for the first time that error correction can work. We demonstrated that with our

01:15Willow chip, and we continue on this journey, pushing the number of qubits and also bringing the

01:20errors way down. And it's the timing now, Karina. What is it, five years till we get something that

01:26actually will show quantum computing being really applicable and useful in the areas of science,

01:32in the area of medicine? Why that timeline in particular? Yeah, we are optimistic that we'll see

01:38real-world applications that are only possible on quantum computers in the next five years. You know,

01:45this breakthrough that we announced this week is a great milestone towards that path. We showed that

01:51quantum echoes, this algorithm, is not only 13,000 times faster on a quantum chip, but that it can be

01:57used to simulate and calculate the exact structure of a molecule. So we think this is an important step

02:03on the path. Someone on your team won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics as among the winners. You have

02:10Hurtman leading the charge. We have real stellar, well, talent, but also a lot of investment. What

02:16did you make of the news, the flow, that maybe the U.S. government is there to support other smaller

02:21quantum players here in the United States? Is that important? Yeah, we are really excited and pleased to

02:27see all of the investment, the support, and the excitement about quantum computing across the board.

02:32The U.S. government has been a strong supporter and partner in this for the last many years,

02:38and we're very excited about those investments and continued partnership across the ecosystem.

02:43Karina, you are the COO of the Quantum Group, right? And we reflected earlier in the week on the show

02:48when the headline hit the Bloomberg about this breakthrough. Actually, markets reacted. Alphabet

02:54shares moved markedly. Would you reflect a little bit on what the days that followed that were like? Did the

03:01phone ring off the hook from various parties that are interested now to know more about how they might be

03:07able to use the tech? Yeah, for us at Google, we are really excited about all the interests that

03:12we're seeing across the board. Our mission at Google Quantum AI is to build quantum computing for

03:17otherwise unsolvable problems. I think that's why there's increasing interest with every breakthrough.

03:22People in other fields are getting excited about what can be possible, and we look forward to

03:26continuing. So the bar has been set now for you. What is the next milestone that we should judge you by

03:33in progress? Yeah, there's going to be continued work across the board. One really important marker of progress is

03:39continuing to push the hardware. So you can see on this willow chip here, it says 105Q. That's 105 cubits on our

03:46willow chip. Too fast. Give the cameraman a chance to catch up. He will get it. Yeah. All right. Keep going. Yes. 105

03:53cubits. So that is great. This has been honestly cutting edge chip. But to get to where we want to go to solve these

04:00important problems in chemistry, in physics, in material science, batteries, energy, and more, we want

04:06to get to a million cubits. So we're going to keep pushing the performance of our system. We're also going

04:11to keep pushing the algorithm and software development so that we can solve these problems.

04:15What does that take, Karina? What does that take in terms of supply chain? What does that take in terms

04:19of talent? What does that take in terms of focus? Yeah, these are all really important questions. I'll start

04:24with talent. You mentioned a Nobel Prize winner on our team. We are super proud of Michel Deveret

04:30and the entire group of teammates and body of work that's happened over the last many decades.

04:37We're super proud of our team. We've got a super talented team of engineers, technicians, research

04:43scientists, program managers, and others who are pushing the boundaries of this technology. We've got

04:48to keep bringing the best and the brightest to our team to push the performance of what is possible.

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