LILLE, France, April 5, 2023 Eviden, the Atos business focused on digital, cloud, big data and security, today announced that its Trustway Proteccio Hardware Security Module (HSM) will soon support post-quantum algorithms, in collaboration with the startup CryptoNext Security, a leader and pioneer in next-generation post-quantum cryptography.

Faced with the possible emergence of a quantum computer, which would imply a collapse in todays cryptographic protection mechanisms, Eviden allows its entire ecosystem of customers to prepare for a migration towards hybrid encryption solutions. This major development in the Trustway Proteccio HSM enables the integration of algorithms from CryptoNext Security.

The Trustway Proteccio HSM, the only HSM to have received ANSSIs Reinforced Qualification (ANSSI QR), constitutes a benchmark security solution both in France and internationally. It offers a very high level of technological protection for managing keys and cryptographic operations to the benefit of critical applications in companies, government administrations, and financial service operators.

With the latest upgrade of its Trustway Proteccio HSM, Eviden has effectively implemented the ANSSI recommendations that push for a gradual, phased transition to post-quantum. The underlying goal is to progressively increase confidence in post-quantum algorithms and their uses, while ensuring that there is no regression concerning traditional (i.e. pre-quantum) security.

The collaboration of Eviden and CryptoNext will speed up the availability of post-quantum algorithms, and enable us to support our partners and customers with this major development in the world of cryptography. This work is part of our ongoing quest for innovation and the development of high-security systems, said Ren Martin, Director of the Trustway Business Unit at Eviden, Atos Group.

Jean-Charles Faugre, founder and CTO of CryptoNext Security added: This partnership with Atos, one of the world leaders in cybersecurity, removes a major barrier to the migration of infrastructures and applications to quantum-resistant cybersecurity in production. The choice made by Atos illustrates its recognition of CryptoNext Securitys expertise and technologies, of which we are proud.

We are fully committed to working alongside Atos in this long-term partnership of technological excellence, to offer our customers sovereign, concrete and operational solutions to the challenges of the post-quantum era, said Florent Grosmaitre, president of CryptoNext Security.

The upgrade of Trustway Proteccio in partnership with CryptoNext Security will be available in Q4, 2023.

Post-quantum cryptography is at the core of Evidens work, which is also launching the first post-quantum ready digital identity solutions. In addition, the Atos Group, through its Eviden business line, is a pioneer in quantum computing. The Group launched the first quantum emulator on the market in 2016 and now offers the most powerful quantum computing application development platform, coupled with a consultancy offering that accelerates real quantum applications through all-in-one capabilities and a best-in-class development environment.

About Eviden

Eviden designs the scope composed of Atos digital, cloud, big data and security business lines. It will be a global leader in data-driven, trusted and sustainable digital transformation. As a next generation digital business with worldwide leading positions in digital, cloud, data, advanced computing and security, it brings deep expertise for all industries in more than 53 countries. By uniting unique high-end technologies across the full digital continuum with 57,000 world-class talents, Eviden expands the possibilities of technologies for enterprises and public authorities, helping them to build their digital future. Eviden is an Atos Group business with an annual revenue of c. 5 billion.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 111,000 employees and annual revenue of c. 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high-performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 69 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), and listed on Euronext Paris.

Source: Atos

Link:

Eviden Supports Post-Quantum Algorithms with Its Trustway ... - HPCwire

Researchers at Yale have extended the lifetime of a qubit by 2.3 times, a major step in improving and proving the viability of quantum computers.

Sammi Kwon 12:43 am, Mar 31, 2023

Contributing Reporter

Vera Villanueva

Yale Daily News

Since the beginning of the quantum revolution in the early 20th century, scientists have been working to prove the functionality of quantum computing.

While in theory the quantum computer is a powerful tool with the ability to encode calculations at speeds faster than those of a classical computer, the physical proof of principle has yet to be demonstrated. However, recent developments by Yale researchers in quantum error correction could represent a major step in proving the feasibility and potential of quantum computers.

A qubit, or quantum bit, is a unit of quantum information that is physically constructed of circuits made of superconductors and cooled to very low temperatures to optimize the circuits efficiency. Yale researchers in the Devoret research group have successfully extended the lifetime of a qubit beyond the break-even point, seeing a gain in the preservation of information and the amount of operations that can be performed on a qubit in one lifetime.

We increased the lifetime by a factor of 2.3, so we more than doubled the number of operations that we can perform before the qubit begins to fail, said Luigi Frunzio, a senior research scientist in applied physics.

With the help of machine learning to optimize calibration and precision, the researchers used quantum error correction a process used to protect information encoded in qubits from errors due to quantum noise to achieve this breakthrough.

According to Frunzio, using the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill quantum error correction code, the research group was the first to see more errors corrected than errors produced in quantum information. Before this breakthrough, he said, there were more errors than corrections from quantum error correction codes.

Steve Girvin, Yales Eugene Higgins professor of physics, noted that prior to this study, many research groups across the world had gotten close to the break-even point. According to Girvin, by incorporating the efforts of interdisciplinary research and an accumulation of progress from over the years, this breakthrough was finally the first to extend the qubits lifetime above the break-even point to see a gain greater than one.

Having a stable qubit above the break-even point shows that the theories behind quantum computing are plausible, according to Baptiste Royer, former postdoctoral student in the Devoret research group.

One of the main claims is to show that it is possible to have a stable qubit above break-even at the heart of quantum error correction, Royer said.

All sources the News spoke to noted that in addition to being a step towards building more functional quantum computers, the breakthrough is also a proof-of-principle demonstration that shows that researchers may eventually be able to build a quantum computer that provides an advantage beyond any modern supercomputer.

While there is still a long way to go before quantum computers can be as effective as classical computers in terms of functionality, according to Girvin, this breakthrough is an important first step to improving the practicality of quantum computers.

This is a big step forward, though, there is still a huge distance to go to get a gain of millions or billions, Girvin said. But the journey to a billion begins with being above one. The grand challenge to solve is if quantum computers are going to be practical.

With this goal in mind, all three researchers mentioned that the next advancement needed to further validate quantum error correction and the practicality of quantum computing is extending the lifetime of qubits to the scale of billions. Royer added that they are also working on extending this breakthrough to more than one qubit such that complex algorithms can be implemented in the quantum computers.

With the feasibility of quantum error correction, better qubits and better machines altogether, quantum computation will not only be possible but also more concretely useful for disciplines beyond science and math, Frunzio said.

The first quantum computer, a two-qubit with the ability to load and output data, was built in 1989.

Read the rest here:

Yale researchers achieve breakthrough in extending qubits lifetime ... - Yale Daily News

We make sense of the first three through programming rules and various fields of classical mechanics; the fourth is something else entirely.

For one, classical physics can predict, with simple mathematics, how an object will move and where it will be at any given point in time and space. How objects interact with each other and their environments follow laws we first encounter in high school science textbooks.

What happens in minuscule realms isnt so easily explained. At the level of atoms and their parts, measuring position and momentum simultaneously yields only probability. Knowing a particles exact state is a zero-sum game in which classical notions of determinism dont apply: the more certain we are about its momentum, the less certain we are about where it will be.

Were not exactly sure what it will be, either. That particle could be both an electron and a wave of energy, existing in multiple states at once. When we observe it, we force a quantum choice, and the particle collapses from its state of superposition into one of its possible forms.

Just as subatomic matter can exist two ways at once, it marks a strange intersection of order and disorder. While its hard to hammer down exactly what or where a particle will be, energy at the subatomic level moves only in discrete, concerted packets, or quanta, defying classical notions about continuous transfer of energy.

Then theres quantum entanglement, what Albert Einstein called spooky action at a distance. Its often described as two dice that always show the same number when rolled, together or even miles apart. When an entangled particle is measured, its partner instantaneously matches the measured particles state.

For Joanna Ptasinski, head of NIWC Pacifics Cryogenic Electronics and Quantum Research branch, this strangeness is what defines quantum: its a complex system of matter or information where these phenomena which cant be explained by classical notions of how the world works are possible.

Quantum is quirky, said Ptasinski, who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering. Its essence is superposition and entanglement. Were researching the power the naval applications lurking behind this weirdness.

Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle, superposition, and entanglement are all part of a growing mathematical framework for subatomic phenomena called quantum mechanics, and it raises questions about the nature of reality as we know it. What can we learn from entangled particles for which space even vast expanses of it is no obstacle? If matter exists in many forms at once until we observe it, what role does observation play in building the world around us? And how do we harness a domain defined by potentiality?

This is what NIWC Pacific scientists explore in its labs, with its partners, and on the National Science & Technology Councils Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science. With quantum experts from across the nation, they ask: What will harnessing quantum phenomena mean for the Navy and the warfighter?

Answers fall in a few categories: sensing, computing, communications, and materials, and the Center has projects to show for each. Answers outside of practical applications have to do with building a quantum Navy: attracting dedicated talent, giving and receiving training, and contributing to national discussions about the future of quantum technology.

All answers point to a vision of a Navy equipped with even more secure communications networks, more advanced sensors, and the faster threat detection and response that comes with them. Its a vision of improved navigation, smarter autonomous systems, and more accurate modeling and simulation. Its unprecedented decision advantage at quantum speed in an increasingly uncertain world.

To Ptasinski, its more advanced supporting technologies. Thats what is needed in order for the field to mature, she said. How about a dilution fridge that isn't half the size of this office? Why not a small dilution fridge? And is that even possible?

The dilution fridge provides the low temperatures needed to measure quantum systems with accuracy. NIWC Pacifics dilution fridge functions in the tens of millikelvin colder than outer space and is one of only two across all warfare centers and the Naval Research Laboratory.

With a dilution fridge, researchers can measure and manipulate qubits, or bits of quantum information. Unlike classical bits, qubits can be in superposition of both binary values 0 and 1 at the same time. That superposition is the key to quantum computings exponential power.

Measuring the path of a qubit through steps in a quantum system is fundamental for quantum research; it teaches us how quantum systems work. And the more we know about how they work, the more we can use them to perform powerful computations.

Ptasinski explains this quantum walk by drawing what looks like a Pachinko machine on the back of this story draft. Drop a particle in at the top and use a traditional computer to figure out in which slot it will end up at the bottom, and youre looking at a major computational task. With just 10 entangled photons and eight layers of potential paths, knowing the probability distributions of where each particle will end up would require more circuits than there are stars in the universe.

Enter quantum. Run the same task on a quantum computer, and a qubits 0-and-1 superposition means more paths can be explored simultaneously. A classical computer would have to calculate the path of a bit expressing 0 separately from the path of a bit expressing 1; a quantum computer can explore both at once, allowing for faster, more intensive calculations. Its like doing linear algebra with complex numbers, Ptasinski said. And wouldnt it be fun to be able to do it with smaller, more powerful equipment?

To Ptasinski, fun would be the ability to build and entangle superconducting qubits, fit many qubits on a single microchip, and discover algorithms that would mitigate errors caused by environmental interferences. It's a very exciting field because we have a lot of puzzles that still need to be solved, she said. Our researchers dont want to work on something thats been done before. Were looking ahead at how quantum computing can solve real-life problems for the Navy.

Exploration of the new frontier wont decelerate anytime soon. Co-leads Naval Research Laboratory and NIWC Pacific established the Naval Quantum Computing Program Office Dec. 2 where quantum subject matter experts across all 14 naval warfare centers will collaborate on quantum applications for the Department of Defense.

The program office will manage access to the Air Force Research Laboratorys hub and its advanced quantum computing power on the IBM Quantum Network. First up for time in the hub is a project from NIWC Pacific.

Back in the Center's own labs, scientists and engineers are making arrangements for a new government-owned facility dedicated to quantum research. Theyll make and test their own prototypes in a lab designed to perform powerful, ultra-precise quantum experimentation.

Ptasinski continues to organize training opportunities for scientists at the Center and across the country. Soon NIWC Pacific will host a professor from the Naval Postgraduate School to teach a course on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, which will also be open to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

High performers will get a shot at a seat in IBMs Quantum Summer School, where distinguished quantum experts teach a small group of students from across the globe. Then NIWC Pacific students will make their way back to its quantum optics laboratory for hands-on experiments led by Ptasinski and her colleagues.

We have many dedicated and motivated scientists and engineers expanding our quantum portfolio, Ptasinski said when asked why NIWC Pacific is the right team for the job. Our researchers have connections to not only industry and other government labs, but also with researchers across the world. Were the U.S. experts in high-temperature superconductor sensors. Among the warfare centers, were leading quantum information science and technology.

Theres more to learn about quantum, the puzzle with no visible pieces. Zoom in and youll find shapeshifting pieces which match each other even miles apart, and a precarious system that falls out of its quantum state and into a classical one at the wrong temperature. But despite all its precarity and complexity, over hours of conversations about building a quantum Navy, Ptasinski expressed no doubts about the Centers ability to solve it.

If we are experiments away from making sense of the quantum world quanta of training, partnerships, and groundbreaking moments away then scientists at NIWC Pacific are making strides toward the answers.

NIWC Pacifics mission is to conduct research, development, engineering, and support of integrated command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, cyber, and space systems across all warfighting domains, and to rapidly prototype, conduct test and evaluation, and provide acquisition, installation, and in-service engineering support.

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NIWC Pacific and its Partners are Building a Quantum Navy - navy.mil

April 3, 2023 Ezunial Eze Burts III has been named the new director of Duality, a quantum startup accelerator operated by the University of Chicagos Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovationin partnership with theChicago Quantum Exchange(CQE), along with founding partners theUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,Argonne National Laboratory, andP33.

Since its launch in 2021, Duality has supported 11 startups from across the globe that are developing software and hardware technologies for quantum computing, communications and sensing. Duality is now accepting applicationsfor its third cohort.The deadline to apply is April 7.

Burts joins Duality after a 20-year career with Boeing. Most recently he served as senior manager of future production systems and technology within the airplane manufacturers environmental health and safety leadership team, where he was responsible for the adoption of technology and innovative industry methods to drive safety, quality, digital transformation, factory automation, and future production strategy. Formally educated in public policy and building innovation ecosystems, Burts has worked to advance Fortune 500 science and technology programs and strategies from concept to university lab to marketplace.

Duality is the nations first incubator-accelerator devoted exclusively to supporting early-stage quantum startups, which play an important role in finding real-world applications for the revolutionary technology. The 12-month program provides entrepreneurial training, business expertise, industry mentorship, funding, access to world-class facilities, and co-location with some of the worlds leading quantum researchers in order to enable quantum technology ventures to thrive and grow.

As director, Burts will be responsible for the programs operational management and long-term financial stability as well as internal and external stakeholder engagement.

We are thrilled to welcome Eze to the Duality team at a critical time in the evolution of the quantum industry, said Dan Sachs, executive director ofDeep Tech Ventures, a unit of the Polsky Center that oversees a suite of deep tech accelerators including Duality. Eze is a natural leader and ecosystem builder. Given the complexities of quantum technology commercialization, his experience and passion will be invaluable for our founders as we continue to build a quantum hub in Chicago.

When I first visited Chicago as a young entrepreneur, I wish I had been able to participate in an accelerator like Duality with access to substantial startup investment and infrastructure, a vast multidisciplinary network of mentors and expertise, dedicated office space, tech transfer and commercialization resources, Burts said. Having a 1-year-old daughter drives home the need to provide education and opportunities for her to become a future STEM leader. I want to inspire and empower her to take on the toughest challenges that improve life for her generation.

Burts, a native of Los Angeles, graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science in Public Policy, Management, and Planning. He received an executive certificate in global marketing from Arizona State Universitys Thunderbird School of Global Management and completed executive education courses at Harvard Kennedy School, Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, and MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a graduate of and has served as a Dynamics and Leadership instructor in the Global Logistics Professional Designation Program at California State University Long Beach. Burts also graduated from the Silicon Valley cohort of the Founder Institute, a pre-seed startup accelerator, with his startup EzuNile Industries, created to apply enhanced artificial intelligence and quantum computing technologies to global industrial water treatment and reuse methods, to improve efficiency and sustainability. Additionally, he is a founding board member of Thriving Elements, a nonprofit headquartered in Seattle that provides mentorship for girls in underserved neighborhoods who are pursuing STEM career paths.

CQE looks forward to working closely with Eze as we build an inclusive quantum future, said David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor and Vice Dean for Research of the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and founding director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. Duality has played an important role in fueling the creation of cutting-edge quantum technologies, which is critical to our regions development as the nations quantum economy. Eze will be a tremendous asset to Duality through its next stage of growth and to the regions burgeoning quantum ecosystem.

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Ezunial Eze Burts Named Director of Duality Quantum - High ... - insideHPC

IonQ showed continued growth in revenue achieving $3.8 million in the fourth quarter versus $2.8 million in the third quarter and $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. For the full year, they achieved a total of $11.1 million versus $2.1 million in 2021. Bookings in 2022 were at $24.5 million portending more growth in 2023 with an estimate of revenue between $18.4 to $18.8 million for the full year. Net loss in Q4 came in at $18.6 million versus $23.9 million in Q3 and $74 million in Q4 2021. For the full year the company showed a loss of $48.5 million versus a loss of $106 million in 2021. The company ended the year with $537 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments compared to $603 million at the end of 2021. The company is benefiting from the large infusions of cash it received from its SPAC merger in October 2021.

The company also summarized key commercial and technical highlights for the year including the acquisition of Entangled Networks, plans to construct a quantum computing manufacturing center in Bothell, Washington, improvements in the performance of their Aria processor to achieve an Algorithmic Qubit level of 25, and several customer collaborations including those with Hyundai Motors, Accenture, and the Irish Centre for High End Computing.

A press release announcing IonQs financial results has been posted on their website here and a replay of their Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Call can be accessed by filling out a registration form here.

March 31, 2023

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IonQ Releases Their Q4 and Fully Year 2022 Financial Results - Quantum Computing Report

The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) offers great potential for third-party projects to build DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, DEXs, gaming projects, and communications apps that are secure from post-quantum cryptography threats.

ZUG, Switzerland, April 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) is investing significantly in applications and resources that can withstand the imminent threat of quantum computing advancements. Today, the QRL announced a grant to the Quantum Resistance Corporation (QRC) to provide a community security program for other QRL grantees, which are using the distributed network and post-quantum secure blockchain technology to securely build Layer2 applications and protocols. The QRL is the only blockchain that utilizes a signature scheme approved by the United States National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) as being post-quantum secure.

The focus of the QRC grant project announced today includes a partnership with threat intelligence firm RedSense, to provide service for other QRL grantees. These services currently include netflow-based security for the distributed QRL environment, a community security program for QRL grant groups, and monitoring and security for all core QRL infrastructure. In time QRC will support the marketing and promotion of projects that result from QRL's work to grow the community of post-quantum secure developers and the offering of future-proof digital solutions. Early projects likely to receive funding include groups running computer systems for mining and building Layer 2 protocols with the QRL, which can opt into the security services and other support offered by QRC.

Growing the community of post-quantum secure developers and future-proof digital solutions.

"We are on the brink of the greatest shift in cryptography technology since the invention of the computer. Yet as this monumental shift is happening, the world is largely unaware," said Dr. Iain Wood. "That's why the QRL community is committed to supporting the top post-quantum secure distributed network and blockchain and empowering our community members to use the QRL technology to advance solutions for post-quantum secure environments."

Grants are available to those interested in building Layer 2 post-quantum secure applications. The goal of the QRL grant program is to generate projects in support of the QRL ecosystem in the areas of open source tools, education, open source infrastructure, post-quantum research, community, and public goods. The grant program is an opportunity to get involved with a cutting-edge open source project and build on the QRL to power the post-quantum secure smart contract platform. The goal is to grow the nascent post-quantum web3 ecosystem together as a community.

More about the QRL grant program including how to apply is here.

The QRCis the recipient of a $500,000 initial grant investment to encourage the use of the distributed QRL platform, community building, and security.

SOURCE The Quantum Resistance Corporation

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Quantum Resistance Corporation to Secure and Support Grantees ... - PR Newswire

Civilizations dont last forever. Just ask the Aztecs. Or the Maya. Or fans of the original Roman Empire.

From the ancient Myceneans in the Mediterranean to the Anasazi in Arizona, societies throughout history have often gone the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo. Wars, or disease, or altered weather patterns, or natural disasters, or famine have repeatedly tipped complex regional societies past the point of stability, initiating chaos, ruin and ultimately total demise.

In his original unabridged dictionary, published in 1828, Noah Webster defined civilization as the state of being refined in manners, from the grossness of savage life, and improved in arts and learning.

Today civilization is a lot more complicated. Now civilization connotes global complexity and technological sophistication beyond anything Webster would have recognized. Civilization has become a state marked by urbanization, advanced techniques (as of agriculture and industry), expanded population, and complex social organization, as the most recent unabridged Websters dictionary describes it.

Civilizations current stability depends on a vast global interdependence of countless connected components. Food and fuel, materials for manufacturing, clothing and housing all require the cooperation of individuals, corporations and nations. Transportation, communication, economic activity anywhere affect everything everywhere (sometimes, all at once).

So far, the economic and social structures, governmental agencies and relevant public policies have managed to maintain something resembling Websters recent definition. But all that is under threat. Civilization is on the brink of breakdown. Theres no guarantee that 21st century civilization will last till the 22nd.

In fact, humankind now faces a multitude of credible existential threats of which everybody ought to be aware. Lack of space, though, requires that immediate warnings herein be restricted to the Top 10 Threats to the Survival of Civilization, with relevant movies noted. (Note to The Last of Us fans fungal zombie apocalypse would have been No. 11.)

Relevant movie: The War of the Worlds

An assault on Earth by extraterrestrials isnt exactly likely anytime soon. Even if enemy aliens are out there, theyd have to come a really long way for no good reason. Surely theyve monitored Earths TV and radio output and would decide to look for intelligent life elsewhere.

Nevertheless, if spacefaring aliens did attack, they could easily destroy all earthly civilization. Even if they appeared to be friendly at first, dont be fooled by a gift book from them titled To Serve Man. And dont think Earths microbes will save us like they did in The War of the Worlds. If aliens possessed the technological capability for interstellar travel, they would also be smart enough to wear a damn mask.

Relevant movie: Armageddon

Not an immediate concern, yet more likely than an alien invasion. After all, an asteroid has already wiped out civilization on Earth once before. True, dinosaur civilization didnt have the same kind of technology human civilization does. But a sufficiently big asteroid would certainly take down a lot of modern technology, and subsequent fires followed by global cooling (a Game of Thrones version of winter) would make a mess of the rest.

Relevant movie: Bee Movie

According to Twitter, if bees all die, humans will soon all be dead as well. That prediction appears to derive from an Albert Einstein quote found widely on the internet: If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live. Such a quote does not appear in the standard compilation of Einstein quotations, though, and nobody seems to have any evidence that he ever said it.

Still, the demise of the bees would be disastrous. Their pollination of important crops (coffee beans, for instance) keeps the world going. Bees are not the only important pollinators of course, but if some combination of pesticide poisoning and other calamities wiped out bees and other pollinating insects and animals, the consequences for humankinds food supplies would be dire. Animal pollination is of at least some importance for the majority of the worlds food crops, a 2007 study concluded.

Still, its unlikely that the human race would die out completely without pollinators. But civilization would probably collapse as the food chain (or web) unraveled, and there was no coffee.

Relevant movie: The Terminator (or Colossus: The Forbin Project)

A vast literature already exists describing the threats that artificial intelligence poses to civilization. Most such threats are minimal now, but as AI systems become more widespread, and both software and hardware become more sophisticated, AIs destructive potential will pose an accelerating threat. A 2018 paper identified dozens of scenarios for AI-generated global catastrophe.

For example, in a future in which civilization relies extensively on robots, a computer virus with AI capability could become a weapon for a malevolent cyberattack. If the attack is on a very large scale, affecting billions of sophisticated robots with a large degree of autonomy, it may result in human extinction, wrote Alexey Turchin and David Denkenberger.

And of course, putting AI in charge of things like nuclear weapons might easily become just as dangerous in real life as it is in the movies. Already the military makes use of AI technologies and, in the future, will no doubt employ AI-powered drones and other robotic weapons with increasing frequency. Military robotics could become so cheap that drone swarms could cause enormous damage to the human population; a large autonomous army could attack humans because of a command error; billions of nanobots with narrow AI could be created in a terrorist attack and create a global catastrophe, note Turchin and Denkenberger.

Relevant movie: Sneakers

Ordinary AI has the potential to be risky enough, so it shouldnt be surprising to discover that quantum computing, in principle a much more powerful technology still in its infancy, poses even more serious dangers. Overhyped as it frequently is, quantum computing nevertheless might someday be able to perform specific tasks dramatically more rapidly than todays supercomputers. One such task might be simulating the interactions of atoms and molecules in order to design new drugs or other chemicals.

Quantum simulation offers an exponential quantum speedup in understanding reaction mechanism in molecules and probing the properties of new materials, quantum scientist Benjamin Schiffer wrote in a paper last year.

In malevolent hands, such power would also enable design of more effective poisons. Using quantum computers, a novel pandemic agent could be engineered without the need for time-consuming ordinary chemical trial and error. There is an existential threat to humanity arising from the prospect of being able to run quantum simulation on a quantum computers in the future, Schiffer argues.

Relevant movie: The Butterfly Effect (title only actual movie is irrelevant)

Any sufficiently complex system is at risk of reaching a tipping point where the slightest disturbance can initiate a collapse. So a seemingly insignificant event can trigger an apocalypse. Its like the way at some point adding a single grain of sand to a large sandpile can cause it all to come tumbling down. Or the snap of a twig initiating an avalanche. Such complex systems seem stable because their complexity conceals underlying vulnerability. But the math exists to analyze such systems and predict their demise.

In 2000, geophysicists Didier Sornette and Anders Johansen warned that such analyses forecast a collapse of human population growth along with the mother of all economic crashes in the 2050s. Obviously, the economy and human population growth are key aspects of civilization as a whole. So these forecasts point to the existence of an end to the present era, which will be irreversible and cannot be overcome by any novel innovation, Sornette and Johansen wrote.

In a 2013 paper, Sornette and Peter Cauwels compared the silent march to catastrophe to the phenomenon of creep in materials, where small, unnoticeable cracks accumulate until the material suddenly fractures. Its like society today is a lobster that thinks its getting a nice, pleasant bath and doesnt notice the water getting warmer until its too late. For the world at large, the result might very well be a blood red abyss, Sornette and Cauwels wrote, the likely and very painful final stage of creep ending in the failure of existing institutions.

Relevant movie: Dont Look Up

Its already evident that social media platforms have amplified ideological idiocy propagated to deter efforts to prevent or diminish many of the threats to civilization. Anti-vaccination propaganda is a prominent example, as is the effort to dispel the dangers of climate change and block efforts to address it. Social media enables disseminators of falsehoods to manipulate the masses and intimidate governments (as well as many organizations within the supposedly legitimate mainstream media).

On its own, social media might not destroy civilization totally, just eliminate civilized discourse. But combined with other options for vast destruction, social media could accelerate civilizations devastation while impeding efforts to prevent it.

Relevant movie: I Am Legend

You would think that a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans and many millions more people worldwide would launch a serious effort to guard against future pandemics. Instead, the pandemic has led not to strengthening of public health measures, but an official response telling everybody theyre on their own.

Institutions charged with protecting public health now say individuals should weigh their own risks, but do not provide the necessary information to weigh those risks, and ignore the fact that the vast majority of people do not possess the expertise needed to weigh risks intelligently anyway. Making pandemic mitigations a personal choice is very much like saying people should decide for themselves whether to obey stop signs or run red lights. Consequently, a future pandemic as infectious as COVID-19, but with a much higher fatality rate, could kill enough people to shred the social fabric.

This danger has long been foreseen, but mostly ignored. In 1988, molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg lamented complacency about the threat of global epidemics, and warned that viruses and other microbes are formidable foes in a never-ending competition for planetary domination. In that natural evolutionary competition, Lederberg wrote, there is no guarantee that we will find ourselves the survivor.

Relevant movie: Dr. Strangelove

After World War II, nuclear war was the most likely end-of-civilization scenario, and it certainly became a popular theme for fictional accounts of civilizations demise. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, though, many people who had been holding their breath since 1945 permitted themselves to exhale. But as long as nuclear arsenals remained undismantled, the threat continued, and now it may be greater than ever.

In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pushed its famous doomsday clock to 90 seconds before midnight, the closest to global catastrophe in the clocks history. The publications science and security board released a statement saying the new time was motivated largely, but not exclusively, by Russias war on Ukraine. Russias thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention, or miscalculation is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyones control remains high.

And Antnio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, declared last year that the world now faces a time of nuclear danger as great as during the height of the Cold War. Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation, he warned.

And of course, if Russia doesnt initiate nuclear holocaust, theres always North Korea, China, Iran and a bunch of other countries.

Relevant movie: Princess Mononoke

Scientists have been warning for more than a century that carbon dioxide emissions could alter the planet. Higher average temperatures, hotter summers, melting sea ice, severe droughts, more wildfires, more powerful hurricanes and yes, even stronger winter storms are already signaling that climate change is not a myth. International efforts to agree on steps to limit rising carbon dioxide levels have stumbled. Study after study has detailed the numerous negative consequences for agriculture, human health and social well-being. Catastrophic climate change could instigate wars, famine, revolution.

Efforts to mitigate climate change might save civilization of course. But if such efforts fail, the worst-case warming scenarios are truly apocalyptic, as Luke Kemp and coauthors warned last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There is ample evidence that climate change could become catastrophic, they wrote. They point out that climate change has played a part in the collapse of many regional civilizations. (Theres a reason why most people have never heard of the Natufian hunter-gatherers of Southwest Asia.) Uncertainties about future climate are great enough, those authors contend, to warrant serious investigation into the prospect that climate change could result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction.

Of course, most of the risks to the civilization are not isolated threats. Climate change could trigger wars (see No. 2) or contribute to the spread of infectious diseases (No. 3), Kemp and colleagues note. And a United Nations report last year found that analyses of numerous related systemic risks show a dangerous tendency for the world to move toward a global collapse scenario in the absence of ambitious policy and near global adoption and successful implementation. In other words, without worldwide cooperation, total societal collapse is a possibility.

Both Kemp and colleagues and the authors of the U.N. report emphasize that these warnings are not predictions but calls to action. Listing threats is not for the purpose of overdramatizing them or to suggest that everybody should surrender to an inevitable existential catastrophe.

Behavioral scientist Caroline Orr Bueno, one of the few sane voices who offsets Twitters threat to civilization with insight and intelligence about misinformation and the techniques for spreading it, warns that scaring people makes them reject the message.

The key is to get people to perceive that the threat is real, she tweets, but also that there are things we can do to effectively reverse the threat.

And therein lies the hope.

Warnings of potential catastrophes should not be taken as cause for despair, but as motivation for investigating the dangers. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience and inform policy, Kemp and colleagues write. After all, when drought dissolved the Natufians civilization 10,000 years ago, they had no power to affect the climate. Modern humans do have such power. They could, in principle, stop using that power to make things worse and take steps to restore civilizations safety and stability. At least until the aliens arrive.

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Here are the Top 10 threats to the survival of civilization - Science News Magazine

Quantum computing could prove to be a game changer if it works. (Getty images)

To discuss the state of quantum computing and its military applications, we talked with Joe Altepeter, a program manager in DARPAs Defense Sciences Office (DSO). Altepeter manages two of DARPAs three main quantum programs including the (US2QC) program, which is about uncovering new, novel, and overlooked avenues in quantum exploration.

Breaking Defense: Quantum computing is talked about as something that can be both offensive in the sense that it has the capability to break all known encryption, and defensive to prevent adversaries from breaking US encryption. Which is the priority for the US government? Or is it both?

Joe Altepeter is program manager of DARPAs quantum program called Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing.

Altepeter: Im going to choose secret option number three. The interest in quantum computers took off in 1995 when Peter Shor discovered an algorithm for efficiently factoring large numbers. Im not an encryption expert, but I dont think that breaks all kinds of encryption, though it certainly breaks some like RSA. Thats why NIST and agencies like that are developing alternative means of encryption that are resistant to the kinds of quantum attacks that youre talking about.

At DARPA, our mandate is to eliminate strategic surprise. While people have been thinking about quantum computers and factoring for decades now, were interested in the next application which might take us all by surprise and lead to a computing revolution. Were interested in [knowing if there] are there other surprising uses of quantum computers.

If we can build a quantum computer, will it really change how we think about computing and revolutionize computing disciplines? Or will it not really do anything that a classic supercomputer couldnt do? The corollary to that is, lets assume it is going to be revolutionary. These computers are really hard to build. Is there a surprising path to build one that the conventional quantum-computing community might have overlooked that DARPA needs to find out [about] this path is going to work?

Of the 10 smartest physicists I know, about half of them are convinced that quantum computers are going to totally revolutionize computing in the 21st century and be a revolutionary way to solve problems from material science, to chemistry, to mathematics, to optimization. The other half are convinced that it will never do anything that a regular or classical computer wont be able to do.

When I think about strategic surprise, its hard for me to think of a discipline that has more potential for surprise than one where we think that its somewhere between totally revolutionary and totally useless. Its somewhere in that zone. DARPA wants to try to bring some clarity to that question.

DARPA says many physicists think quantum computing is revolutionary. Others think it wont be much better than todays supercomputers. Shown is a Cray supercomputer at NASAs Lewis Research Center in 2009. (NASA.)

Breaking Defense: What is the status of quantum in the DoD now? Is it still only in the realm of DARPA and the other research agencies?

Altepeter: As far as I know, the DoD doesnt use quantum computers for any real problems right now. However, quantum computers, and particularly the ones that are being developed in the commercial industry, have done some amazing, near miraculous stuff. Its been shown that quantum computers can now do calculations that are totally impossible for any classical computer anywhere on earth to do.

You and your readers might be thinking, that certainly sounds like its useful that they can do something thats totally impossible for anything else to do. At this point, quantum computers are being used for proof-of-principle problems that show we can do something that nothing else can do, but we havent taken that next step of bending that computing power to a useful problem that we really need an answer to.

For the DoD, that means having an effect in the field, doing something we care about. Theres a lot of tantalizing pathways. If we keep getting better quantum computers and we better understand how to bend them against the problems we care about, maybe we can solve corrosion resistance and save the Navy billions of dollars maintaining their ships. Maybe we can come up with better pharmaceuticals and significantly reduce the cost of the drugs we need to care for our people. Maybe we can solve optimization problems and significantly increase the efficiency of everything were doing.

That said, from my perspective, we dont have a clear path of how to solve those yet. The reason that DARPA is stepping in is to try to help get clarity on what is the link and how hard is it going to be, if we can at all, connect the really miraculous machines that we have and well have in the next few years with the problems that the DoD really cares about.

Breaking Defense: When I read the background on DARPAs three quantum computing programs, I was particularly interested in US2QC because of its mission to speed up quantum development through unexplored avenues. Describe the program.

Altepeter: Theres a lot of hype in this space, which is understandable because people are excited about the potential for this technology. But it makes it hard to tell whats for real and what isnt. Particularly when theres a lot of commercial companies pursuing this technology, dozens of them.

Understandably, a lot of the secret sauce, the things that make their approaches work, are kept as trade secrets. But DARPA is interested in understanding approaches which are different from things that weve pursued in the past.

We put out a call that said: if youre a company, university, or organization and think you have found the solution to build a big, powerful quantum computer and you think youre on the path to do so, we would like to give you an opportunity to prove it. Well put together a validation team of some of the best experts in and around government and work with you to give you enough funding so that you wont be slowed down.

We can provide a lot of value to these organizations by being a neutral third party to ask hard questions. We think that they can provide value to DARPA in its primary mission, which is to avoid being surprised if there really is a fantastic route out there that doesnt look like what weve tried before to get to a working quantum computer.

Breaking Defense: Through what means are you trying to speed up quantum development software, chips, AI?

Altepeter: Up until now, for the past 20 years or so, many organizations [though] not all of them, have been focused on trying to prove that this isnt all just the realm of imagination, that it really is possible to build quantum computers that can do things that are impossible for any other computer to do. Weve met that milestone as a society.

The biggest next step is to start focusing on the end goal. Instead of focusing on whether it is possible to make next years computers twice as quantum as this years computers, we need to look ahead. Maybe its decades away, but what computational capability would be a game changer for the DoD, for the commercial space? What would help us fight climate change? What would make the world a better place?

Focusing on that goal and not just saying that it would really be great if we had better batteries or didnt have to worry about corrosion on Navy ships. But instead saying, I want this specific computational capability to calculate the structure of this molecule or this material at this scale with these parameters. If I could do that, Id have a much better chance of inventing something thats going to help the DoD in the field, in real life.

If thats our goal, if were trying to get to the moon, we have to stop measuring progress by how high the planes are flying. Weve got to figure out whats the R&D path, what are the metrics, whats the plan thats really going to get us there?

From my perspective, its not a particular chip, its not a particular type of interconnect, its not getting a CPU speed up to a certain amount. Its focusing on our shared goal and then deriving what are the most important pieces that we want to make a DARPA-style push to improve.

Breaking Defense: Final thoughts?

Altepeter: DARPA is not convinced that quantum is going to be a revolutionary capability. Were also not a skeptic who thinks that quantums definitely not going to work. We want to go in with a clear-eyed view and do a rigorous evaluation to see where and how and on what path quantum can make the DoDs capabilities better, and can really make the world a better place. Thats what were trying to do, not prejudge the outcome, but take a hard look and see what we learn and reduce strategic surprise in this space.

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DARPA's explorations in quantum computing search for the art of the possible in the realm of the improbable - Breaking Defense

Time: it's constantly running out and we never have enough of it. Some say its an illusion, some say it flies like an arrow. Well, this arrow of time is a big headache in physics. Why does time have a particular direction? And can such a direction be reversed?

A study, published in Scientific Reports, is providing an important point of discussion on the subject. An international team of researchers has constructed a time-reversal program on a quantum computer, in an experiment that has huge implications for our understanding of quantum computing. Their approach also revealed something rather important: the time-reversal operation is so complex that it is extremely improbable, maybe impossible, for it to happen spontaneously in nature.

As far as laws of physics go, in many cases, theres nothing to stop us going forward and backward in time. In certain quantum systems it is possible to create a time-reversal operation. Here, the team crafted a thought experiment based on a realistic scenario.

The evolution of a quantum system is governed by Schrdingers Equation, which gives us the probability of a particle being in a certain region. Another important law of quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which tells us that we cannot know the exact position and momentum of a particle because everything in the universe behaves like both a particle and a wave at the same time.

The researchers wanted to see if they could get time to spontaneously reverse itself for one particle for just the fraction of a second. They use the example of a cue breaking a billiard ball triangle and the balls going in all directions a good analog for the second law of thermodynamics, an isolated system will always go from order to chaos and then having the balls reverse back into order.

The team set out to test if this can happen, both spontaneously in nature and in the lab. Their thought experiment started with a localized electron, which means they were pretty sure of its position in a small region of space. The laws of quantum mechanics make knowing this with precision difficult. The idea is to have the highest probability that the electron is within a certain region. This probability "smears" out as times goes on, making it more likely for the particle to be in a wider region. The researchers then suggest a time-reversal operation to bring the electron back to its localization. The thought experiment was followed up by some real math.

The researchers estimated the probability of this happening to a real-world electron due to random fluctuations. If we were to observe 10 billion freshly localized electrons every second over the entire lifetime of the universe (13.7 billion years), we would only see it happen once. And it would merely take the quantum state back one 10-billionth of a second into the past, roughly the time it takes between a traffic light turning green and the person behind you honking.

While time reversal is unlikely to happen in nature, it is possible in the lab. The team decided to simulate the localized electron idea in a quantum computer and create a time-reversal operation that would bring it back to the original state. One thing that was clear was this; the bigger the simulation got, the more complex (and less accurate) it became. In a two quantum-bit (qubit) setup simulating the localized electron, researchers were able to reverse time in 85 percent of the cases. In a three-qubit setup, only 50 percent of the cases were successful, and more errors occurred.

While time reversal programs in quantum computers are unlikely to lead to a time machine (Deloreans are better suited for that), it might have some important applications in making quantum computers more precise in the future.

This article was originally published in March 2019.

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Scientists Have Reversed Time Inside A Quantum Computer, And The Implications Are Huge - IFLScience

The story so far: The allure of quantum computers (QC) is their ability to take advantage of quantum physics to solve problems too complex for computers that use classical physics. The 2022 Nobel Prize for physics was awarded for work that rigorously tested one such experience and paved the way for its applications in computing which speaks to the contemporary importance of QCs. Several institutes, companies and governments have invested in developing quantum-computing systems, from software to solve various problems to the electromagnetic and materials science that goes into expanding their hardware capabilities. In 2021 alone, the Indian government launched a National Mission to study quantum technologies with an allocation of 8,000 crore; the army opened a quantum research facility in Madhya Pradesh; and the Department of Science and Technology co-launched another facility in Pune. Given the wide range of applications, understanding what QCs really are is crucial to sidestep the misinformation surrounding it and develop expectations that are closer to reality.

A macroscopic object like a ball, a chair or a person can be at only one location at a time; this location can be predicted accurately; and the objects effects on its surroundings cant be transmitted faster than at the speed of light. This is the classical experience of reality.

For example, you can observe a ball flying through the air and plot its trajectory according to Newtons laws. You can predict exactly where the ball will be at a given time. If the ball strikes the ground, you will see it doing so in the time it takes light to travel through the atmosphere to you.

Quantum physics describes reality at the subatomic scale, where the objects are particles like electrons. In this realm, you cant pinpoint the location of an electron. You can only know that it will be present in a given volume of space, with a probability attached to each point in the volume like 10% at point A and 5% at point B. When you probe this volume in a stronger way, you might find the electron at point B. If you repeatedly probe this volume, you will find the electron at point B 5% of the time.

There are many interpretations of the laws of quantum physics. One is the Copenhagen interpretation, which Erwin Schrdinger popularised using a thought-experiment he devised in 1935. There is a cat in a closed box with a bowl of poison. There is no way to know whether the cat is alive or dead without opening the box. In this time, the cat is said to exist in a superposition of two states: alive and dead. When you open the box, you force the superposition to collapse to a single state. The state to which it collapses depends on the probability of each state.

Similarly, when you probe the volume, you force the superposition of the electrons states to collapse to one depending on the probability of each state. (Note: This is a simplistic example to illustrate a concept.)

The other experience relevant to quantum-computing is entanglement. When two particles are entangled and then separated by an arbitrary distance (even more than 1,000 km), making an observation on one particle, and thus causing its superposition to collapse, will instantaneously cause the superposition of the other particle to collapse as well. This phenomenon seems to violate the notion that the speed of light is the universes ultimate speed limit. That is, the second particles superposition will collapse to a single state in less than three hundredths of a second, which is the time light takes to travel 1,000 km. (Note: The many worlds interpretation has been gaining favour over the Copenhagen interpretation. Here, there is no collapse, automatically removing some of these puzzling problems.)

The bit is the fundamental unit of a classical computer. Its value is 1 if a corresponding transistor is on and 0 if the transistor is off. The transistor can be in one of two states at a time on or off so a bit can have one of two values at a time, 0 or 1.

The qubit is the fundamental unit of a QC. Its typically a particle like an electron. (Google and IBM have been known to use transmons, where pairs of bound electrons oscillate between two superconductors to designate the two states.) Some information is directly encoded on the qubit: if the spin of an electron is pointing up, it means 1; when the spin is pointing down, it means 0.

But instead of being either 1 or 0, the information is encoded in a superposition: say, 45% 0 plus 55% 1. This is entirely unlike the two separate states of 0 and 1 and is a third kind of state.

The qubits are entangled to ensure they work together. If one qubit is probed to reveal its state, so will some of or all the other qubits, depending on the calculation being performed. The computers final output is the state to which all the qubits have collapsed.

One qubit can encode two states. Five qubits can encode 32 states. A computer with N qubits can encode 2N states whereas a computer with N transistors can only encode 2 N states. So a qubit-based computer can access more states than a transistor-based computer, and thus access more computational pathways and solutions to more complex problems.

Researchers have figured out the basics and used QCs to model the binding energy of hydrogen bonds and simulate a wormhole model. But to solve most practical problems, like finding the shape of an undiscovered drug, autonomously exploring space or factoring large numbers, they face some fractious challenges.

A practical QC needs at least 1,000 qubits. The current biggest quantum processor has 433 qubits. There are no theoretical limits on larger processors; the barrier is engineering-related.

Qubits exist in superposition in specific conditions, including very low temperature (~0.01 K), with radiation-shielding and protection against physical shock. Tap your finger on the table and the states of the qubit sitting on it could collapse. Material or electromagnetic defects in the circuitry between qubits could also corrupt their states and bias the eventual result. Researchers are yet to build QCs that completely eliminate these disturbances in systems with a few dozen qubits.

Error-correction is also tricky. The no-cloning theorem states that its impossible to perfectly clone the states of a qubit, which means engineers cant create a copy of a qubits states in a classical system to sidestep the problem. One way out is to entangle each qubit with a group of physical qubits that correct errors. A physical qubit is a system that mimics a qubit. But reliable error-correction requires each qubit to be attached to thousands of physical qubits.

Researchers are also yet to build QCs that dont amplify errors when more qubits are added. This challenge is related to a fundamental problem: unless the rate of errors is kept under a certain threshold, more qubits will only increase the informational noise.

Practical QCs will require at least lakhs of qubits, operating with superconducting circuits that were yet to build apart from other components like the firmware, circuit optimisation, compilers and algorithms that make use of quantum-physics possibilities. Quantum supremacy itself a QC doing something a classical computer cant is thus at least decades away.

The billions being invested in this technology today are based on speculative profits, while companies that promise developers access to quantum circuits on the cloud often offer physical qubits with noticeable error rates.

The interested reader can build and simulate rudimentary quantum circuits using IBMs Quantum Composer in the browser.

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Explained | The challenges of quantum computing - The Hindu