You're not alone if you've been hearing the buzz about quantum computing and wondering what it means or why it matters.
The rapidly evolving field remains deeply technical, expensive to advance, and not yet particularly useful for anyone other than researchers. While small-scale quantum computers exist, Big Tech companies — including IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — are racing to scale them up to commercial relevance.
Their investments are intended to usher in a new generation of ultra-powerful computers capable of performing advanced computations impossible for classical computers. While some researchers argue sufficient advancement in the field could someday usher in science-fiction-sounding outcomes such as time travel, there's a broader consensus that, sooner rather than later, quantum computing will bring about major advancements in medicine, materials science, and other fields that would profoundly impact society.
Michael Biercuk, the CEO of the Australian quantum infrastructure software company Q-CTRL, told Business Insider some of the earliest applications for quantum computing are "just not very sexy, but they are economically, extremely high impact."
BI spoke with over a dozen people in the quantum computing field, including researchers from IBM and Amazon Web Services, the executives behind startups including Q-CTRL and QuamCore, and scholars running some of the top quantum labs in the country.
Here's what they say are the most promising ways quantum computing could change the world.
Improved logistics
"One major opportunity for true quantum advantage is logistics optimization and supply chain management," Biercuk said. "These are very challenging problems, and we know they are computationally bottlenecked."
Optimizing supply chains and improving logistics operations can make major organizations like the military and global shipping industry more efficient, helping businesses ensure consistent quality and reliable supply. This could also drive down the cost of consumer goods, reduce waste, and prevent spoilage of perishable items, potentially addressing larger social problems like world hunger.
New building materials
Lighter and more durable materials used to create roads and bridges, houses, and other everyday items could make construction quicker and more affordable and reduce the need for repairs.
"Some of the earliest applications that we'll be able to tackle that are relevant and provide not just utility, but also an advantage with a quantum computer over any classical computer is in the area of material science and development," Oskar Painter, the director of quantum hardware at Amazon Web Services, told Business Insider in late February, following the company's announcement of its Ocelot chip.
Even more promising is the potential discovery of self-healing materials — imagine buildings created of metals that repair themselves or asphalt that fills in its own cracks — could also be possible through quantum computing, Microsoft teased in its February press release announcing its Majorana 1 chip.
More efficient batteries
Optimizing battery materials at the molecular level can also lead to more efficient and powerful batteries, improving the range of electric vehicles and increasing electrical grid stability.
"There could be opportunities where the energy density could go way up just because you have a better matrix other than carbon for storing lithium ions, like we do conventionally in current LiPo batteries," Painter said. "These are things that I would say aren't so glamorous when you talk about them, but they can have some major real-world impact."
Drug discovery
Rob Schoelkopf, chief scientist and cofounder of Quantum Circuits, told Business Insider that quantum computing might help us speed up the discovery of new drugs by identifying new compounds with higher efficacy and fewer side effects.
"With a full-scale quantum computer, drug discovery times will go from 15 years to five years, maybe to three years to two years, depending on the nature of the problem that needs to be solved," Schoelkopf said.
Breaking encryption
Perhaps more ominously, quantum computing also shows security researchers one way that we know will "definitely" lead to our current encryption methods being broken, Karl Holmqvist, the CEO of Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology used by the US Department of Defense, told Business Insider.
"Anything that's internet-connected will likely have problems," Holmqvist said. "A lot of the time, we trust that the links between systems are secure and the data that's gone between them is secure, and there's no way to get into those that they're encrypted. If you take away that default assumption, it allows so many new entry points into systems that it becomes quite concerning."
Arthur Herman, director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative at Hudson Institute, added that sufficient advancements in quantum computing could undermine the security of any encrypted data, from financial transactions stored on the blockchain to national security secrets.
"What we're talking about is the possibility of a hack, not just into individual cryptocurrencies, but our larger financial markets," Herman said.
…but we're not there yet
"We think we are on the cusp of demonstrating quantum advantage," IBM's VP of quantum adoption and business development, Scott Crowder, told Business Insider, referring to when a quantum computer outperforms classical machines. "But the industry is still a few years from a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer."
For now, he added, Big Tech companies need to be cautious about raising the public's expectations when promoting breakthroughs in their research to avoid creating disillusionment with the field.
"Over-hype" about the industry, Crowder said, could lead people to discount quantum technology before its promise can be realized.
Still, when the industry eventually solves its problems with error correction and scalability — which Crowder said he believes is imminent — it will be "like science fiction come to life."
