As a technologist, it’s important to be curious. This is true whether
you’re just starting your career as a junior developer or if you’re the
CTO of a Fortune 500 company. Curiosity, and the constant pursuit of
learning, are things for which I’ve always dedicated time.
In the past few decades, we’ve seen innovations in technology move at a
staggering pace, with many of these advancements having an impact on the
world around us seemingly overnight. With the sheer number of new
technologies being developed, it can be daunting to keep up. In a world
that moves as quickly as ours, it’s easy to prioritize learning about
the technologies that are here now and might have an immediate impact on
our businesses. But there are other technologies that have a longer time
horizon, and despite decades of research and development, might still
potentially need many more years of work before they’ll reach a similar
level of impact. As technologists, it’s our responsibility to also keep
an eye on these advancements—to learn where they’re headed, to steer
our business partners toward the right use cases for them, and even to
help shape what they become.
Quantum computing is one such technology. I find the very idea of
quantum computing fascinating. It takes computer science—the hardware
and software that we created in the computer industry—and blends in
the fundamentals of nature, physics, and other observed sciences. I
believe quantum computing is an area that will fundamentally change the
world around us… eventually. But I also find that there’s a lot of
hype and misinformation around quantum computing, with only a handful of
experts truly in a position to discuss its current state (did you catch
what I did there?). I wanted to cut through the hype and go straight to
one of these experts myself to get a better understanding of where
quantum computing is today and where it’s headed in the future.
Introducing, Dr. John Preskill.
Dr. John Preskill is a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. He is
the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the
California Institute of Technology, where he is also the Director of the
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter. Preskill received his
Ph.D. in physics in 1980 from Harvard, and has been a member of the
Caltech faculty since 1983. He is also an Amazon Scholar, helping lead
our efforts at the recently opened AWS Center for Quantum
Computing,
where we’ve embarked on a journey to build a fault-tolerant quantum
computer. John and I recently had a conversation on quantum computing,
and today I’d like to share that conversation with you directly. I hope
you enjoy.
As John says, we’re still a long way from realizing the true potential
of quantum computing. However, we’re used to thinking long term at
Amazon and we’re not afraid of making big investments in the future. We
believe quantum computing will play a significant role in the years to
come.
If you’d like to hear more from John, you can follow him on Twitter at
@preskill. If you’d like to learn more
about our quantum computing service, Amazon Braket, you can learn more
here.