UNIVERSIDADE DE BRASÍLIA

INSTITUTO DE LETRAS – IL
DEPARTAMENTO DE LÍNGUAS ESTRANGEIRAS E TRADUÇÃO – LET
142573 – Inglês Instrumental 2 Prof. Julwaity Cardoso Neto

Quantum computers will make your laptop look like an abacus

(adapted from http://www.newsweek.com)

1 The race to make the first quantum computer is becoming as important as the race 75 years ago
to get the first nuke. It could change the balance of power in politics and business.
Quantum computers have long been theoretically possible but a kind of futuristic fantasy,
like Interstellar-style wormhole travel, or zero-calorie Hershey Bars. I first wrote in the 1990s about the
5 quest for one. Now breakthroughs are coming faster, and scientists say we’re 15 to 20 years away from
fully functional, programmable quantum computers.
This technology will make the microprocessor in your laptop seem as sophisticated as a booger.
The silicon-based technology inside today’s computers, which engineers have constantly made faster and
cheaper for five decades, is running out of ways to get better. Quantum computers will herald, well, a
10 quantum leap — like riding a horse one day and getting into a fighter jet the next. These machines will be
millions of times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers, solving problems that now elude
solving, like dead-on accurate weather prediction or modeling protein molecules for medical research.
A quantum computer could also create indestructible encryption, and unlock any existing
computer security as easily as you unzip your fly. We’re entering an era of cyberwar, so imagine how
15 power might shift if one country gets the ability to invade any other country’s computer systems while
putting up the ultimate computer defenses. That’s a major reason nations are pouring money into this
research. The U.K., China, Russia, Australia, the Netherlands and other countries are in the game. In the
U.S., the CIA, National Security Agency and Pentagon are all funding research, while Los Alamos
National Laboratory operates one of the most significant quantum computer labs.
20 Negotiations to keep nuclear weapons from Iran are certainly critical, but if you play out the
promise of quantum computing, an American machine could bust into Iranian systems and shut down all
that country’s nuclear activity in an instant. It’s like a game of rock-paper-scissors: Nukes might be the
world’s version of a rock, but quantum computers would be paper, winning every time.
And yet quantum computing research isn’t self-contained and secretive in the manner of the Los
25 Alamos atomic bomb work during World War II. Some of it is academic work at universities such as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with findings shared in scientific papers. Technology companies
are working on this, too, since these things have the potential to be business nukes. IBM, Google and
Microsoft all fund research. Imagine if Google gets one before Microsoft. That pesky Bing could wind up
 vaporized. Google has a Quantum Artificial Intelligence unit working with the University of California,
30 Santa Barbara, with a goal of developing a quantum machine that can learn.
Meanwhile, a Canadian startup, D-Wave Systems, is partially funded by Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos — and the CIA. The very secretive and often controversial company is already marketing a hybrid
machine that seems to be a traditional silicon computer with some sort of quantum turbo thruster.
There’s no telling, however, how this technology will emerge, or whether it will be hoarded by a
35 few nations (like nukes) or spread around the globe (like computers). “There’s a healthy mix of
cooperation and competition,” IBM quantum computing scientist Jerry Chow tells me. “But there’s
starting to be more competition.”
Keep in mind that this technology is really hard, and really, really weird. A quantum computer
makes calculations using the spin of special atoms, called qubits, and it relies on bizarre quantum physics
40 properties like multiple parallel universes. Quantum computing is so fast because it calculates all possible
answers at the same time. To borrow a metaphor from D-Wave CEO Vern Brownell, let’s say you had to
find an X written on one page among the 37 million books in the Library of Congress. A typical
computer today would look at every page, one at a time — very quickly, but still in a serial process. A
quantum computer could look at every page at the same time — as if it were splitting the task into a
45 billion parallel universes, finding the answer, then coming back to ours to show us where that X is.
Scientists have managed to get a few qubits to do calculations in labs, but we are far from
getting a stable, programmable, fully quantum machine. On April 29, IBM announced what it says is a
significant advance — a way to detect and measure the two types of quantum errors, called bit-flip and
phase-flip, at the same time. That sounds esoteric to most of us, but it will help with a peculiar problem
50 that vexes researchers: The very act of looking at a qubit to get its answer can make the qubit change its
answer. So some mechanism needs to figure out whether we’re seeing the right answer. Again — this
stuff is really weird.
The various labs often disagree on the best way to build a quantum computer, and the art of
programming qubits is as big a challenge as making the machine in the first place. Today’s software is
55 based on algorithms, which are linear, one-step-at-a-time calculations. Top mathematicians aren’t yet
sure how to write algorithms that calculate everything at the same time. It’s like trying to come up with a
recipe for an apple pie in which all the ingredients combine in the pan in the same split second.
Although this work seems hard, scientists have become sure that the first quantum computers are
within reach. Expect quantum computing news to keep coming. And it might not be too early to prepare
60 for quantum-era life a couple of decades from now. If you’re already worried that artificial intelligence
will take your job, quantum AI will seem terrifying. Your Google self-driving car will be smarter than
your whole department.