Artificial Intelligence today is everywhere. Despite the hype—wherein, a Google engineer claimed that his company’s AI system was sentient and Elon Musk – Tesla’s CEO envisioned that by 2029, computers would have gained human intelligence – yet, the technology is unsuccessful at simple daily tasks such as driving vehicles, specifically when encountering unexpected circumstances that necessitate even the smallest amount of human intuition or thinking.
The hype surrounding AI is not new, given the fact that Musk himself cautioned that the technology could turn into humanity’s “biggest existential threat” if governments fail to regulate it. Regardless of the computers attaining human-like intelligence, the world has already invited a different, equally troublesome AI demon: Because today’s AI is a bit more than a brute, simple-minded for automating decisions through the use of algorithms and other technologies that superhuman amounts of data, its extensive use by governments and corporations to monitor public spaces, social media, generate deepfakes, and release autonomous lethal weapons has become a threat to humanity.
Adding fuel to the fire is the absence of any AI regulation. Instead, unintelligible technology giants like Google and Meta, have taken on the roles of judge and jury in all things AI. They are silencing critics, which include even their own engineers who warn of the dangers.
The world’s failure to control the demon of AI—or, more accurately, the crude technologies masquerading as such—should serve as a warning. There is another powerful emerging technology that has the potential to create chaos when combined with AI: Quantum Computing. There is an urgency to understand the potential impact of this technology, regulate it, and avert it from falling into the wrong hands before it becomes too late. The world must not make the same mistakes it made by refusing to regulate Artificial Intelligence.
Although Quantum Computing is still in its early stages, it functions very differently than today’s semiconductor-based computers. Given that the numerous projects being pursued around the world turns successful, these machines will turn extremely powerful, executing tasks in seconds, that would have taken millions of years for traditional computers to conduct.
Semiconductors are referred to as digital technology, since it represents data as a series of 1s and 0s, while Quantum Computers use a computing unit known as a qubit. A qubit can hold both 1 and 0 values at the same time by utilizing a counterintuitive property of quantum physics known as superposition. As a result, two qubits could represent the sequences 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, and 0-0 in parallel and at the same time. This enables a significant increase in computing power, which increases exponentially with each additional qubit.
Once quantum physics finishes its experimental stage and finds its way into daily applications, it can be used for many purposes and will change many aspects of life. With Quantum Computers, better weather forecasts, financial analysis, planning of logistics, space research, and discovery of drugs can be enabled, thanks to the Quantum Computer’s ability to rapidly crunch enormous amounts of data that would be overwhelming to any of today’s systems. Some people will most probably utilize the for vicious activities such as jeopardizing bank records, private communications, and passwords on every digital computer worldwide.
In today’s cryptography, data is encoded in huge combinations of numbers that are not possible to crack within a feasible time with the help of classic digital technology. However, Quantum Computers that take advantage of quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty may have the potential to try out combinations so quickly that they can crack encryptions by brute force almost instantly.
To be clear, Quantum Computing is still in its infancy—though where exactly is unknown. Because of the technology’s enormous potential power and revolutionary applications, Quantum Computing projects are almost certainly already incorporated into defense and other government research. This type of research is cloaked in secrecy, and there are numerous claims and speculations about the achievement of milestones. Projects are known to be pursued by China, France, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. Competitors in the United States include IBM, Google, Intel, and Microsoft, as well as numerous start-ups, defense contractors, and universities.
Despite the absence of publicity, trustworthy demonstrations of a few basic applications such as quantum sensors capable of detecting and measuring electromagnetic signals, have occurred. One such sensor was used to accurately measure the magnetic field of the earth from the International Space Station.
In another experiment, Dutch researchers teleported quantum data across a rudimentary quantum communication network. The scientists used three small quantum processors instead of traditional optical fibers to immediately transfer quantum bits from a sender to a receiver. These experiments have not yet demonstrated practical applications, but they may lay the preparations for a future quantum internet in which quantum data can be securely transported across a network of Quantum Computers at speeds faster than the speed of light. So far, that has only been possible in science fiction.
The Biden administration believes the risk of losing the quantum computing race to be inevitable and desperate enough that two presidential directives were issued in May: The first one is placing the National Quantum Initiative advisory committee directly under the control of the White House and the second is directing government agencies to assure U.S. leadership in quantum computing while alleviating the possible security risks posed by quantum computing to cryptographic systems.
Experiments are also being conducted to combine quantum computing with AI in order to overcome the limitations of traditional computers. Large machine-learning models now take months to train on digital computers due to the massive number of calculations required—OpenAI’s GPT-3 for instance, has 175 billion parameters. When these models reach trillions of parameters, as is required for today’s dumb AI to become intelligent, they will take even longer to train. Quantum computers have the potential to greatly accelerate this process while using less energy and space.
TensorFlow Quantum, one of the first quantum-AI hybrid platforms, was released in March 2020 by Google, taking the search for patterns and anomalies in massive amounts of data to the next level. When combined with quantum computing, AI has the potential to produce even more revolutionary results than the AI sentience that critics have warned about.
Due to the potential scope and capabilities of quantum technology, it is critical not to repeat the mistakes made with AI, where regulatory failure has resulted in algorithmic bias that amplifies human prejudices, social media that advocate conspiracy theories, and attacks on democratic institutions fueled by AI-generated fake news and social media posts. The dangers stem from the machine’s ability to make decisions on its own, with flaws in the computer code resulting in unexpected, often negative, outcomes.
In 2021, the quantum community issued an urgent call to action to address these concerns. Furthermore, a critical public and private intellectual property on quantum-enabling technologies must be safeguarded from theft and abuse by adversaries of the United States.
There are also concerns about national defense. The holy grail in security technology circles is what’s known as a cryptanalytically relevant Quantum Computer—a system competent in breaking much of the public-key cryptography used by digital systems around the world, allowing for blockchain cracking, for example. In the hands of an adversarial regime, that is a very dangerous capability.
Experts caution that China appears to be ahead in several areas of quantum technology, including quantum networks and quantum processors. China has built two of the world’s most powerful Quantum Computers, and in 2017, scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei created the world’s first quantum communication network with the help of advanced satellites.
These publicly disclosed projects are scientific machines designed to prove the concept, with little bearing on quantum computing’s future viability. However, given that all governments are pursuing technology to prevent an adversary from being first, China’s successes may indicate an advantage over the US and the rest of the West.
Beyond expediting research, targeted controls on developers, users, and exports should be implemented as soon as possible. Patents, trade secrets, and other intellectual property rights should be tightly protected—a return to the kind of technology control that was a key component of Cold War security policy. The revolutionary potential of quantum computing raises the risks of intellectual property theft by China and other countries to an entirely new level.
Finally, to avoid the ethical issues that have plagued AI and Machine Learning, democratic nations must enact controls that are proportionate to the technology’s power while also respecting democratic values, human rights, and fundamental freedoms.
Governments must urgently consider regulations, standards, and responsible uses—and learn from how other revolutionary technologies, such as AI, nanotechnology, biotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear fission, have been handled or mishandled.
The United States and other democratic nations must avoid the same mistakes they made with AI and begin preparing for the quantum era today.
