One challenge that many in the tech sector have been shouting about is the lack of talented individuals from which they can hire. Tech companies often require advanced degrees such as Masters and PhDs. Could the coming wave of quantum innovation suffer from a lack of suitable hires with the advanced backgrounds required to build the quantum hardware and software stack?
Perhaps just as once programming required advanced skills to understand the intricacies of the machine in the early phases of the quantum computing industry, then understanding how fundamentals work might be an essential requirement. Workers must understand advanced concepts such as quantum mechanics, linear algebra, and statistics. As the existing tech industry matured, developers and programmers had to care less for the fundamentals and could focus on other areas. Take App developers, for example, who don’t care too much for machine specifics and work at the top level of the software stack. Right now in Quantum, there is no pretty application where a developer could focus on UX (user experience) or gameplay, as quantum development still operates at the level of manipulating Qubits or quantum bits.
To demonstrate the value of quantum computing (its very existence) is to provide a computational advantage (see the latest article where Google has purported to have created a quantum advantage). That means doing some form of computation faster or better. But it’s not clear what, in reality, the workaday applications that quantum computers will be doing. Complexity theory has shown several putative quantum applications, such as cracking code or some forms of search, but these are only the headliners. A quantum zoo of algorithms exists, and researchers are constantly looking for opportunities to expand their repertoire of algorithms.
In Quantum Technology, a grasp of the fundamentals is key
A quantum computer is never likely to be a mass-scale computational device. Some might even state that Quantum Computing is looking for that killer application.
Many would argue that in terms of analogy, we are somewhere after the creation of the integrated circuit. We see multiple companies race to increase the number of addressable Qubits. Companies like IBM have already produced machines in the low hundreds, but to create use cases, machines need to be built with millions typically of available Qubits. We are still working out those use cases, which means working out how those limited Qubits can be developed into circuits that perform a given function.
The quantum industry is busy expanding and accelerating nonetheless. It needs various people, from those working at the hardware layer to those more focused on exploiting whatever size circuits can be built in areas such as Quantum Machine Learning, which may be one of the “hottest ” quantum applications. But unlike the mature technology sector, the value is much lower down the chain. There is no consumer device, no operating system (yet). The quantum industry therefore needs technical disciplines focused on exploring the tech stack at a lower level, and this typically means as stated, working those Qubits to perform a useful task.
Developing for quantum stacks has been made easier with the profusion of a few key quantum frameworks that embody their own language for qubit manipulation. Frameworks like Qiskit are perhaps the most widespread. Others, such as Q# and Cirq have their following. But there are other entries such as tket too. Which tool is used can be a matter of technology but like conventional programming, is one of taste.
Teaching kids Quantum Technology early enough?
The education system has only just caught on to the idea of teaching students popular languages like Python. The author learnt the Pascal language at school, but it wasn’t really commercially used, but it did at least illustrate how to structure code and create logic. I now know countless languages and am a language-agnostic for the most part because the fundamentals don’t change that much across the different languages.
We need to bring kids and youngsters up to speed on this fundamental quantum unit of computation, just as I learned about bits and bytes. We then need to get those qubits manipulated to do something. We can’t predict all the twists and turns the quantum industry will take, but that early exposure to the basics will seed an entire generation. Just as I learned Pascal language and never once put it into production, it did at least act as a gateway drug for other languages such as C and C++ and later Python which did get used for commercial applications.
As kids are introduced to concepts such as the bit, then quickly to the idea of a qubit, students can learn the fundaments of a quantum world, and despite their lives being so digital, the real world is quantum. Earlier is better, in my opinion. As soon as students understand logic and binary and basic first-order logic, they should be counselled that the world is not binary and is quantum. Whilst the latest revolution is driven by bits and bytes – the next revolution will be driven by qubits.
How to Learn Quantum?
Quantum is becoming more and more mainstream. There are even Masters degrees in Quantum Computing and Technology and postgraduate courses in Quantum. Still, generally, if you don’t want to go back to stay in school or university, there are plenty of online quantum computing courses (quantum computing courses to prepare for the revolution). Quantum Zeitgeist has a guide on “How to get started with Quantum Computing”. But for “old schoolers” like me, getting stuck into a language or framework is just as valid.
