About this episode

Shayle Kann interviews Bob Sorensen to explore the current state and future potential of quantum computing amidst significant investment and hype.

Over the course of the past decade, quantum computing (or the concept thereof) has ridden hype cycles, just like AI or the internet writ large.  In the past year, however, as governments across the globe have committed north of $50 billion to the sector, and billions more have poured into quantum startups, the technology is finding itself in the midst of a particularly dramatic hype wave.  Yet even as the money pours in, quantum remains a nascent technology that hasn’t seen any use in the real world. Among other applications, it offers enormous potential to revolutionize material discovery and molecular design, and to turbo charge clean energy tech. But how close we are to actually moving from isolated chips in a lab to bringing these real-world commercial applications to life remains a bit of a mystery. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for quantum computing at Hyperion Research. They dig past the VC hype to map out the current state of quantum hardware, look at the timeline for fault-tolerant computing, and evaluate where the true performance gains lie. Shayle and Bob discuss: - Why recent claims of "quantum advantage" are often based on…

People in this episode

Host: Shayle Kann

Guest: Bob Sorensen

Topics covered

• quantum computing
• technology hype
• material discovery
• molecular design
• fault-tolerant computing
• AI models

Keywords

• quantum advantage
• physical qubits
• logical qubits
• noise reduction
• data-driven AI
• science-driven architectures

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hyperion Research, AI, quantum computing, clean energy tech

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