The future of quantum takes center stage at NY Tech Week

Some investors say that once your taxi driver is talking about something, the market is near the top. But according to panelists at a New York Tech Week discussion on quantum computing, the more people who know about the technology, the more promising its future will be.

This week, New York Tech Week attendees descended upon Manhattan to debate and educate about emerging technologies. IBM contributed to the conversation by hosting a panel to discuss, as its title suggested, "What Quantum Actually Means for Computing.” Jerry Chow, CTO of Quantum-Centric Supercomputing and IBM Fellow, took the stage before a packed auditorium at Big Blue’s One Madison Avenue office to debate the state and future of the field with speakers from academic partners that included New York University (NYU), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and Stony Brook University.

“A word that used to be the purview of quantum physicists and people with PhDs is now something everyone’s trying to grasp,” said moderator Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, physics reporter at New Scientist, in their opening remarks. “Though it’s become so huge, it also remains somewhat mysterious as to how exactly it all works and what it means.”

Quantum computing’s future, according to Chow and the others, will be defined less by what makes it unique and mystical, and more by how it fits with existing paradigms to define and solve science and math problems that we couldn’t previously grapple with. In this vision, quantum processing units, or QPUs, will be an “equal partner with our CPUs and GPUs,” said Chow. And making that possible will be algorithms and platforms developed by the rising generations of researchers.

Why quantum?

Quantum computing uses the laws of quantum mechanics to perform operations outside the capabilities of classical computing. Because of its fidelity in the physics of nature, quantum computing is expected to be better suited to simulating natural phenomena.

IBM put the first quantum computer on the cloud a decade ago, and although the team has produced many major demonstrations of its capabilities since then, the technology is still in an early phase. But IBM is betting big on quantum computing, and it’s not alone. University experts shared the stage with IBM’s Chow to discuss the quantum revolution.

Chemistry and materials science will be important areas for quantum computing, said Juan de Pablo, executive dean of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. “Quantum uses a molecule to simulate a molecule,” he said, pointing out how the technology has the potential to outperform classical computers at accounting for all the electronic interactions in a molecule.

Beyond the hardware, though, algorithms and platforms will be crucial to useful quantum computing, the panelists agreed. “It’s not just about the compute, it’s how it’s all linked together,” said Andrea Goldsmith, president of Stony Brook University.

Getting even more specific, de Pablo predicted the pace of progress: “Every five years, students come up with a new algorithm that changes the field. We’re going to see the same thing in quantum,” he said.

What’s next?

In response to an audience question about recent discoveries that inspire them, panelists gazed into the not-so-distant future.

Pointing to a recent breakthrough performed on IBM Quantum hardware, Osama Raisuddin, a quantum algorithms researcher at RPI, expressed his excitement for the future of molecular simulations.

“The Cleveland Clinic result was pretty impressive,” he said, referring to a recent study in which IBM and its partners at Cleveland Clinic and RIKEN simulated a protein complex containing over 12,000 atoms. “I think there’s a lot more to be done in that area,” Raisuddin added.

Goldsmith emphasized her excitement with quantum networking. “The fact that you can send information through quantum entanglement without actually sending it is incredibly inspiring,” she said, invoking the unintuitive yet powerful phenomenon known as quantum teleportation. Researchers at Stony Brook are working on ways to send data about qubits over standard fiber optic cable, she said, and they plan to unveil the first wireless quantum network. Quantum networking exploits the quantum property of entanglement, where qubits are inextricably linked even over distances, to communicate information without “sending” it in the normal sense. Because of that, it’s “100% secure, unbreakable,” Goldsmith said.

To wrap up the panel, Chow emphasized that it’s never too early to start learning about quantum computing. He pointed to the educational content available on the IBM Quantum Platform, and even encouraged the audience to deploy AI agents to help them learn about quantum and start writing Qiskit code.

“To miss this confluence of AI and quantum at this fundamental discovery phase, I think, would be a lost opportunity,” he said. IBM also hosted a quantum "magic" masterclass that helped attendees build a circuit and execute it on a real IBM quantum computer for free. If you missed the class, you can attempt it yourself.