How can organizations benefit from quantum The Global Quantum Commercialization Conference Concludes Successfully
The conference was held in the heart of the City of London, one of the world's great financial centers; not a coincidence, since this was not a conference primarily about science, or even technology: business was at the center of most of the discussions.
The conference center is located in a part of the City of London called Houndsditch, which is just outside the medieval walls of London. The place seemed allegorical for the burgeoning quantum industry: camping outside the fortress of commerce.
Guided by the editors of The Economist, the Global Quantum Commercialization Conference explored how organizations can get the most out of quantum. The event combined accessible insights with more in-depth techniques to distinguish hype from reality, and create a path forward. Attendees learned what kinds of problems can be helped to solve and how leaders can harness their potential and identify investments that provide the best business outcomes.
Roland Scharrer, chief data and emerging technology officer at AXA, and Andreas Nawroth, leading expert in artificial intelligence at Munich Re, shed light on this area of quantum business.
Sharrer said AXA begins exploring quantum technologies in 2020. In fact, many speakers at the conference said their companies have been investigating quantum computing for about 2-3 years. And like many other companies, one of AXA's main interests in quantum computing is to use it for optimization.
For Sharrer, his main interest is in using quantum algorithms to minimize the risk associated with AXA's use of reinsurance (reinsurance is a product that one insurer buys from another insurer to cover losses in certain situations; this allows one insurer to share risk with other companies, and it is often used to cover "black swan ("black swan" events - these are very rare events, extremely difficult to predict, and can be very expensive for insurers).
Striking a balance between the use of reinsurance and internal risk insurance is typically an optimization problem, and it is very important for insurers to get them right. Because a mistake, even the slightest, can be very costly, Sharrer explains, and current optimization is done using heuristics that rely on human expertise.
While reinsurance optimization can be done better on a traditional computer, Sharrer says it would take decades to do the calculations. And that's where quantum computers could come in handy: Because some quantum computers are predicted to be very good at solving certain optimization problems that may be relevant to reinsurance. But like many of the technologies discussed at the conference, such a quantum computer does not yet exist.
In his talk, Nawroth of Munich Re talked about how insurers could use quantum computers to do simulations that would help them better understand the various phenomena that affect risk; these include climate change, green technology, financial markets, pandemics, cybersecurity, and more.
The most interesting thing he talked about is that insurers need to understand the risks associated with the specificity of quantum computing itself. This is because their customers will want to ensure protection against these risks. One of these risks has to do with the clone-free theorem of quantum mechanics (which states that it is impossible to create an exact copy of a quantum state); this, Nawroth said, would make it difficult for quantum information systems to recover after a cyber attack.
Another risk is that the current lack of understanding of quantum algorithms makes it difficult to insure against the risks associated with their use. Finally, Nawroth notes that the shift to quantum computing will mark a shift from deterministic to probabilistic algorithms: again, this presents new challenges in terms of insurance.
Several speakers compared quantum computing to artificial intelligence (AI) and its potentially disruptive impact on business and society. While it is tempting to compare the two, it is important to remember that AI is a mature technology that is already seeing widespread commercial applications. And, in the case of ChatGPT, AI can be accessed from any smartphone. In contrast, quantum computing is a much more emerging technology that is only now seeing some green shoots of commercial applications.
Jay Gambetta, who leads IBM's quantum computing initiative, is one person who has embraced this idea of moving forward. He says we've moved beyond the "quantum cool" stage and have entered the "practical" phase in the development of quantum computers.
"IBM's 2023 generation of quantum processors will have 100-1,000 quantum bits or so, and we intend to scale that up to 100,000 quantum bits in the next decade. While much of this work will be focused on the engineering side, I'm sure physicists will play an important role in making this happen; so maybe it's a little early to say that the industry has moved away from physics and into the real business world."
Of course, in addition to the aforementioned topics detailed above, the conference was also packed with big names: attendees included Stuart Nicol, Quantum Exponential's Chief Investment Officer; Stuart Woods, Quantum Exponential's Chief Operating Officer (who participated in the "Quantum Bubble Winter Prevention "); Jack Hidary, COO of SandboxAQ (who discussed the role of quantum in reversing global warming); Dr. Kristin M. Gilkes, Partner at Ernst & Young (who organized a roadside chat on corporate quantum readiness); Rajeeb (Raj) Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum (who spoke on the role of quantum in reversing global warming); and ) Hazra (who presented "How to Ensure that Quantum Collaboration Continues in the Competitive Field? a related talk); Dr. Victoria Horan Goliber, Global Head of Technical Sales, D-Wave (who organized a panel discussion related to how to move from proof of principle to commercial application) ......
More than 1,500 global leaders, policymakers and business executives from 80 countries attended the offline conference in London, with 606 attendees attending in person, the conference website said. Over the course of two days, more than 120 high-level speakers and 63 sessions explored how organizations should prepare for the future of quantum technology "today.
As the global conference came to a successful conclusion, the conference announced a statement about the next conference: "Thank you to this year's attendees, and we hope you enjoyed the timely and relevant discussions that took place in London. The third annual Global Quantum Commercialization Conference will be held in London in 2024."
Reference links:
[1] https://events.economist.com/commercialising-quantum/
[2] https://physicsworld.com/a/commercializing-quantum-technologies-the-risks-and-opportunities/
