Quantum Computing Poised to Accelerate Google’s AI Goals
Tucked away in a discreet cluster of buildings in Santa Barbara, California, a team of Alphabet researchers is quietly working on a highly ambitious initiative — pushing the boundaries of quantum computing.
These efforts may ultimately redefine the technological landscape and give Google an edge in the race for the next great platform shift.
“In the future, quantum and AI, they could really complement each other back and forth,” said Julian Kelly, director of hardware at Google Quantum AI.
Although Google made significant strides in artificial intelligence over the years, it was OpenAI that captured public attention first with the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. That left many with the impression that Google had fallen behind in the generative AI race.
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A Quantum Leap Forward with Willow
In response, Google has sought to reclaim its innovation narrative. Toward the end of last year, the company introduced Willow, a state-of-the-art quantum processor.
According to Google, this chip solves complex computational problems dramatically faster than any classical machine.
Perhaps more importantly, the design showed that scaling up quantum bits could drastically reduce error rates — a crucial step toward making quantum systems useful.
“That’s a milestone for the field,” said John Preskill, director of the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter. “We’ve been wanting to see that for quite a while.”
Willow may position Google as a trailblazer in the impending quantum era. Beyond academic achievement, it also presents a business opportunity.
As AI systems exhaust much of the quality training material available online, quantum computing might offer new ways to generate the data AI needs to keep evolving.
“One of the potential applications that you can think of for a quantum computer is generating new and novel data,” said Kelly.
He pointed to AlphaFold, an AI system created by Google DeepMind, which has revolutionized the study of proteins and earned its creators the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
″[AlphaFold] trains on data that’s informed by quantum mechanics, but that’s actually not that common,” said Kelly.
“So a thing that a quantum computer could do is generate data that AI could then be trained on in order to give it a little more information about how quantum mechanics works.”
Kelly believes that within five years, Google could unveil a real-world solution only achievable with quantum computing. But to truly lead the next phase of innovation, the company must transform that scientific achievement into a viable product.
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