With more than 40 years in the tech industry, former IBM quantum leader Bob Sutor discusses the inflection point we’re now at with the emerging technology.
Quantum computing is at the forefront of emerging technology that could prove to have significant benefits for society. These computers excel at complex problem solving and when they reach their full potential, could prove to bring huge benefits to drug discovery, materials science cybersecurity, weather prediction and more.
The problem is that this computational power comes with a giant asterisk – it they’re not actually there yet. While the science behind quantum is sound, the scale at which they have to evolve in order to achieve transformational impacts are one of the tech world’s biggest challenges.
Unlike a traditional binary computer that uses binary ‘bits’ – which can be either one or zero – a quantum bit (qubit) can be one, zero or both at the same time. This is what gives quantum computers in incredibly fast processing power.
However, to get a true grasp of the concept, I spoke to industry veteran and former IBM quantum leader, Bob Sutor.
“The way most people explain, which I don’t think is really right, is they start talking about flipping coins, and they start talking about these weird phrases, like zero and one same time, whatever the heck that means,” he said.
“My way of describing this is that really quantum mechanics is the part of physics that describes what happens when you get really small, so inside atoms, electrons, photons of light and things like this. There is one big one computer, and it’s called nature, and all the applications are us and everything you see. And somehow using these very strange principles that don’t like the way we normally programme computers, nature gets it done. So, all we’re really trying to do with quantum computing is emulate the way nature works.”
‘We were doing this very complicated stuff under the covers’
Sutor no stranger to the world of quantum. A mathematician at his core, he spent most of his 40-year career working at computer giant IBM, with a significant amount of that time spent in IBM Research, specifically in the mathematical sciences department leading a team of 300 people.
“They did things like machine learning and data mining and optimisation, things that now people associate with AI,” he said. “We weren’t just consultants, taking off-the-shelf solutions. These were all the very difficult one-off leading-edge problems … so not to belittle today’s AI, which are tons of words, [but] we were doing this very complicated stuff under the covers.”
At some point, Sutor became interested in the quantum work that was being done at the other end of the IBM Research building and moved into what eventually became IBM Quantum, where he stayed for seven more years. After nearly four decades, Sutor left IBM to pursue quantum work elsewhere.
“I joined a small company called ColdQuanta, which later became Infleqtion that was also quantum, but just didn’t do computers. They did atomic clocks, quantum sensors and quantum radio antennas.”
Most recently, the tech expert has been working as an analyst and has also been appointed as a non-executive director to the board of start-up Nu Quantum. “My goal is to understand the breadth of these industries, particularly quantum.”
Where are we on the quantum road?
While there’s an undeniable hype around quantum computing and its potential, the fact that we’re far away from many of its impacts is hard to get away from. So where on this journey are we really and how long is the road we must travel?
Sutor joked that for the longest time, every year, it would be said that it’s “three to five years” away, with no change to that even as time moves on until eventually the narrative changes to “two to four”.
But jokes aside, he said the best way to think of where we are when it comes to quantum is to look at another milestone that once seemed impossible – the US space mission of getting to the moon.
There were many phases to actually getting to the moon after US president John F Kennedy said this was the plan. First, it was about getting to mercury, then it was about being able to orbit, then it was about reaching the moon, then it was about actually landing.
“During that time, they were testing out a lot of different technologies, solid booster rockets versus liquid, combinations of liquid and things like that. And that’s where I think quantum computing is.”
While there are countless start-ups working in the area of quantum, roadblocks are in the way, leaving us in a very experimental phase. “None of them have gone to the moon yet,” said Sutor. “But we seem to be going from that first experimental phase to starting to push past a little bit and to understand this.
“We’re understanding the problem at a better level of clarity. And we’re working on must-do sort of technologies to build it up. And that’s the change I’m feeling too.”
While the real-life applications are a while away yet, it can be hard to quantify the value of solving these complex problems without knowing what it could do.
Any online search will throw up many promises for quantum computing, especially in cryptography and data optimisation. However, this is not where Sutor truly sees the first applications taking place.
“I think once we learn how to do that, pharmaceutical, material science, batteries, lithium is a very little atom way that up there at the top of the periodic table, so I suspect we’ll see some battery-related things, sooner rather than later for sustainability.”
The need for global collaboration
While you can’t roam the internet without virtually tripping over a start-up or investment fund focusing on the area of quantum, Sutor said there’s much more to that needs to happen in terms of global governments and policy.
He said that if we as a society are going to get serious, we have to get “much more deliberate” about tackling quantum and it doesn’t just mean throwing money at different companies.
“That is one of my passions, trying to push that sort of unified direction. It’s not just a country, it can be a region, it can be an alliance and so forth, but it’s not going to happen with just a random collection.”
Bringing it back to the space analogy Sutor talked about the James Webb Space Telescope and the number of companies that were involved in building components for that piece of equipment.
Thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians from 14 countries, 29 US states and Washington DC contributed to build, test and integrate Webb. In total, 258 distinct companies, agencies and universities participated.
“You look out at the world of quantum and there’s this little company that thinks they’re going to do it all,” said Sutor. “You have to have a mentorship, and you’re going to have to have these companies combine.”
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