Entering quantum computing, TikTok turns into TiQToQ

Recently, GZH found an interesting phenomenon, TikTok, a short video platform operated by Chinese company ByteBeat, has started to recruit quantum research interns. Perhaps in many people's eyes, TikTok is just a popular entertainment tool, but they didn't expect to start playing with quantum as well?

According to a job ad posted by TikTok on Collage, the company will offer a 12-week quantum research intern position in the summer of 2023 [1]. As of PhotonBox's posting, TikTok has removed this job posting from its official website and Collage homepage, and it is unknown what the intention is.

01Tiktok is hiring 2023 quantum research interns

The job ad indicates that a 12-week internship for one of TikTok's engineering teams is scheduled to begin in May or June 2023 at its office in Mountain View, California. Candidates whose resumes meet the requirements will be invited to participate in TikTok's technical online assessment through HackerRank, a technical assessment and remote interview tool.

In the job ad, TikTok says it is using quantum computing and machine learning-based learning methods to study electronic structures and other quantum chemistry topics: TikTok hopes to make breakthroughs in areas including chemistry and materials, and suggests it is targeting quantum computing superiority by developing "applications that are difficult to handle by classical methods. to target the superiority of quantum computing.

Candidates should be currently pursuing a PhD in computer science or a related STEM, quantitative field: they should have experience with at least one systems programming language, such as C++, Java or Rust [2].

The job advertisement does not detail the requirements for quantum-related knowledge for the position, but indicates that the candidate will need to have the ability to design and develop modules or core functions of a kernel cloud-native distributed analytics database system. The position also involves researching "cutting-edge technology developments" in database and data management, identifying potential future directions and solving "unique and complex problems" on large-scale, high-performance cloud infrastructures.

02Parent company ByteDance has already made the first move

Recently, there are rumors that ByteDance has lost control of TikTok. In response, ByteDance said that TikTok Global is currently a 100%-owned subsidiary of ByteDance, and after the completion of the Pre-IPO financing, TikTok Global will become an 80%-owned subsidiary of ByteDance.

As far as ByteBounce is concerned, as early as April 2021, news broke that ByteBounce is laying out quantum computing; its official website shows that both social recruitment and campus recruitment are recruiting quantum computing direction researchers and quantum computing direction interns. However, other than these low-key recruitment information, there is no official news in the industry about ByteDance's research and vigorous layout in the quantum field.

On July 11, 2022, Bytehop, as the first participating institution, designed a hybrid quantum and classical algorithm that can efficiently simulate the calculation of small molecule properties, which was published in the journal Chemical Sciences [3]. Relevant co-authors include Dr. Dingshun Lv from Bytehop AI Lab, Professor Zhigang Shuai, an expert in quantum chemistry at Tsinghua University, and Xiaoming Sun, a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Traditional quantum algorithms such as Variational Quantum Eigen solving (VQE) are highly advantageous in simulating small molecules such as LiH and hydrogen chains of up to 12 quantum bits; however, accurate simulation of large realistic molecules remains a challenge due to the size and fidelity limitations of quantum hardware. In the experiment, the scientific team combined an adaptive energy ordering strategy and a classical computational approach, density matrix embedding theory, to reduce the circuit depth and problem size, respectively: a method is proposed to circumvent the limitations and allow a multiscale description of the quantum system to achieve realistic quantum simulations of real molecules. This implies the possibility of solving industrial chemistry problems on near-term quantum devices.

The experiment uses an energy sorting (ES) strategy to select only the main excitations in the original operator pool and constructs compact quantum circuits in the VQE program, the new algorithm is called DMET-ESVQE. the above figure shows the workflow of the DMET-ESVQE method. The chemical system is first decomposed into fragments. Then the effective embedding Hamiltonian Hemb in the density matrix embedding theory (DMET) iteration is solved by ESVQE. the ESVQE module uses the quantum devices in the blue boxes to prepare the quantum states and measure the physically observable quantities. the DMET iteration and the ESVQE parameter optimization are performed on a classical computer, indicated by the green boxes.

The DMET-ESVQE algorithm is able to reduce the number of quantum bits by approximately one order of magnitude and reduce the number of excitation parameters by several orders of magnitude, thus effectively reducing the resource requirements on the quantum device.

DMET and ESVQE reduced quantum bit count and excitation parameters. cVQE stands for conventional VQE without energy ordering (ES) strategy.

In addition to this contribution to the quantum chemistry simulation algorithm, which has been shown to be effective in scaling up state-of-the-art NISQ quantum computers, Dr. Ding-Shun Lu presented a panel on "Quantum Computing Applications" at the CCF Quantum Computing Conference in August 2022, chaired by Yu Liang, co-founder of Photon Box. In August, Dr. Lv Dingshun introduced the applications of quantum computing in finance, biopharmaceuticals, chemical simulations, etc. and the challenges they face.

In response to TikTok's "test drive" in quantum computing, Stuart Woods, Managing Director of Nanoscience at Oxford Instruments, said, "I'm sure TikTok is just evaluating whether quantum algorithms show better or different insights than classical solutions. If they don't, they're missing out on a business opportunity."

Reference links：

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/research-intern-quantum-research-summer-2023-phd-at-tiktok-3304406213

[2]https://thequantuminsider.com/2022/10/19/tiq-toq-tiktok-advertising-for-quantum-research-intern/

[3]https://arxiv.org/pdf/2109.08062.pdf