The clock is ticking down to the realisation of quantum AI and the sought-after ‘quantum advantage’. In many boardrooms, however, quantum remains mysterious: full of promise, but not fully understood.
Still, the desire to profit from being first on the scene is already driving significant spending. A recent quantum AI survey from SAS found that three in five business leaders are now exploring or actively investing in this space.
Potential use cases are emerging in high-stakes industries where speed, scale, and precision matter most – from next-generation risk simulation in finance to precision diagnostics in healthcare to real-time disaster response planning in government.
Below, Amy Stout, head of Quantum Product Strategy, and Bill Wisotsky, principal Quantum Systems architect, both at SAS, give the scoop on the current quantum conversation. This includes defining quantum AI and the quantum advantage, considering the timeline to a defining quantum moment, and explaining why decision-makers, the media, and the public should care about this technology.
What is quantum AI?
Stout: Quantum AI is the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, a new type of computation. Today’s laptops and supercomputers operate using classical computing, which functions with binary bits that can be either zero or one. Quantum computers fundamentally work differently. They function using qubits, or quantum bits, which can be 0, 1 or a combination of both at the same time.
It sounds complicated, but basically, tapping into quantum AI can help solve specific types of problems with greater speed and/or accuracy. It is expected to be most helpful in optimisation, machine learning and molecular modelling, which can impact various industries, including financial services, manufacturing, life sciences, and many more.
What is the ‘quantum advantage’?
Wisotsky: In the news, there are constant reports about quantum advantage. These stories typically involve speed, with research showing that a quantum computer could solve a problem in hours that would take conventional computers hundreds of thousands of years. These problems are very specific and designed to demonstrate how quantum computers operate. Although these are important steps in research, they have no direct connection to practical applications for real-world customers. All too often, the media views quantum advantage as one-dimensional, but the quantum advantage is not only about speed – it is multidimensional.
For example, in quantum machine learning, the advantage could be the ability to encode data into higher-dimensional representations achieved by quantum physics, which traditional machine learning cannot, and/or the ability to train models with less data. Quantum advantage could also mean a significant reduction in the power required for quantum computing.
This gets to the centre of the argument. When trying to solve applied problems with quantum computing, the quantum advantage needs to be evaluated multidimensionally, using criteria that benefit the business seeking to leverage this technology. Yes, it could be about speed, but it could also include many other possibilities.
Are we reaching a quantum inflection point?
Stout: It is a running joke in the quantum space – quantum is three to five years away, every year. Many experts are trying to be realistic about the state of the market. We do not want people to come in thinking that quantum AI is going to solve all their problems right now. There are multiple types of hardware and numerous vendors developing quantum computers, all working to achieve the scale, speed, and accuracy required for these computers to provide tangible benefits for real-world, production-sized problems. Quantum has not yet reached that widespread technological maturity.
However, there is already much interest and investment in quantum today, and rightfully so. We are seeing industry leaders investing in quantum, fully aware that in 2025, they likely will not see advancements that impact their bottom lines. What they will gain is the first-mover advantage, including in-house expertise and intellectual property, when the technology is more mature.
I am an optimist, and I look at hardware providers’ R&D; roadmaps, considering what has been achieved over the last three to five years and what is on the horizon for the next three to five years. I think we stand a good chance of seeing these computers able to provide quantum advantage for problems we would consider low-hanging fruit, relatively soon. From there, I hope we will continue seeing examples of the heights we believe quantum AI could achieve.
Why should people care about quantum?
Wisotsky: Simply, quantum computing could change the world. There are numerous use cases, but the two areas that I believe will be most significantly impacted by quantum computing are AI and medicine. As quantum computers become more powerful and our understanding of how to utilise them evolves, AI will be able to leverage the physics underlying quantum computing for its computations.
I think medicine will greatly benefit in the areas of drug discovery and biologics, with researchers gaining the ability to represent and model complex molecular and biological processes in ways that are currently impossible. That could look like researchers discovering better drugs and bringing them to market faster, accelerating processes that would have taken a decade of development otherwise.
However, in the future, I do not think average users will even know they are using quantum computing to accomplish their goals. I envision quantum computing as a sort of accelerator, akin to all the ‘Pus’ we currently have. Are average users aware that the application they are using is running on a CPU, GPU or NPU? No, they just use the application.
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