The City Quantum & AI Summit Experts See Potential of Quantum and AI, Recognize Hurdles And Drawbacks

Insider Brief

• Experts at The City Quantum & AI Summit emphasized that while quantum computing and AI hold transformative potential across industries, significant technical and ethical challenges must be addressed to fully harness their capabilities.
• Panelists highlighted quantum’s potential to disrupt current encryption standards, stressing the need for robust security measures such as post-quantum cryptography to protect sensitive information.
• AI’s current applications in healthcare, such as improving drug development processes, demonstrate its immediate value, while quantum computing’s future role could provide deeper insights into complex biological processes, helping advance life sciences and medicine.
• Image: Lord Mayor’s Colloquy with Chair Bruce Beckloff, CEO of Bloc Ventures; Elham Kashefi of National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC); Julia Sutcliffe, CSA at Department for Business and Trade; Hans Henrik H. Knudsen, CEO of Kvantify; Steve Suarez, Founder & CEO of HorizonX Consulting and Ala Alenazi of investors Kinnevik. (Photos courtesy of Pauliina Roots Photography).

Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are on the cusp of transforming industries from healthcare to finance, but experts gathered at The City Quantum & AI Summit cautioned that significant hurdles must be overcome to harness their full potential.

During the Lord Mayor’s Colloquy session at the summit, one of the event’s highlights, experts discussed how quantum and AI are transforming business, work, security, and health, in what could be the first steps in the beginning of a new era.

Bruce Beckloff, CEO and co-founder of Bloc Ventures, an early stage venture capital company investing in deep tech companies, said that the evolution of deep technologies, including quantum computing and AI, are difficult to predict, but expects these technologies to gradually spawn more and more real-world applications.

“If you look at the things going on in AI — it’s embraced more heavily — we have enterprise-grade companies that are putting out AI, like Microsoft and such, and so we may see a lot more adoption quicker, but nonetheless, it’s going to take a long time and but it will make change our lives as we know it,” Beckloff said.

He added that although this disruption seems to be occurring swiftly, the impact of quantum and AI may be felt over generations.

“So for us, it’s really amazing to see what’s going on, and it feels scary,” said Beckloff. “But actually, for our children, they’ll be used to they’ll understand it, and by the time they get to our age, they’ll know how to implement it and look at it.”

Quantum’s Security Implications

The panel then delved into the security implications of quantum computing. Steve Suarez, Founder & CEO of HorizonX Consulting and an expert in quantum security, conducted an experiment to illustrate the vulnerability of current encryption methods.

Suarez asked the audience to pull out their mobile phone and, after going to the start screen, share it with the person next to them. There was — understandably — some reluctance from the crowd.

“That’s what quantum computing is like — imagine that quantum computing has the capability to remove any encryption that exists on in the world today, and that’s the feeling that a lot of companies and people will get,” said Suarez “This is the reality. It’s a new technology, and it’s not good or bad. Quantum isn’t good or bad. It’s what you do with it.”

Suarez added that efforts to mitigate the damaging side of quantum are growing stronger and calls for these mitigation methods are now coming from the highest levels of government, science and society. Suarez added that post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) are today’s most effective tools to make the PQC-era safer.

“The U.S. government — the White House — actually put out an executive order saying that anybody that wants to sell or work with the government will be required to be PQC compliant,” he said.

Julia Sutcliffe, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), discussed the government’s role in supporting the adoption of these technologies.

“At DBT, we support businesses to grow,” said Sutcliffe. “So we want the businesses that are currently forging ahead in these technology areas to grow. We want more to come along, but we also want more of the adoption and diffusion of these technologies through the economy so we get increased productivity and opportunities in existing companies.”

AI and quantum computing are potentially transformative in addressing key challenges, such as clean energy and healthcare, according to Sutcliffe.

Healthcare is another area where quantum and AI could help — and not just in areas that are typically included in lists of primary use case for these advanced technologies. For example, AI is being used to improve cancer treatment and help the National Health Service (NHS) find clues to better treatment in the organization’s large, complex databases.

The Future Now

While many of AI and quantum’s benefits rest in the future, Ala Alenazi, an investor at Kinnevik, said that AI in particular is already creating numerous opportunities to advance the life sciences, including operational efficiencies in the drug-making process that can deliver treatments to patients faster.

“The biggest problem that we have today is being able to design safer drugs quickly and get it out to patients,” said Alenazi. “And this is a massive problem for those in the pharmaceutical industry, it currently costs around a billion dollars to get a drug to market, and even then, only one in 10 drugs actually succeed, and it takes us 10 years to get there. So the first question we asked is, How can we improve this? And the way that we have improved — and I’m glad this is being brought up — is with AI. AI has helped us create a lot of operational efficiencies that have compressed these timelines and have helped us improve, design safer drugs.”

While we may have to wait for quantum’s true potential to fully reveal itself, according to Alenazi, experts expect that fully realized potential to be vast for the life sciences.

“We have two problems that we’re trying to address, the one of trying to design better drugs, and then that question, which begets the next, and that one is: ‘How can we understand ourselves truly, as humans?’ We have multiple dimensions. We’re dealing with different chemical reactions that all occur simultaneously. It’s the question that AI cannot solve and cannot help, and that’s where we turn and look towards quantum. Quantum and the use cases that we’re most excited about is helping us to understand ourselves and our chemical and biological processes better.”

Hans Henrik H. Knudsen, CEO of Kvantify, explained the company’s work in developing quantum software and how important it is in developing quantum computers that can be used for practical applications.

“Fundamentally, how do you use that for useful things? It’s still an open question. We’re very bullish about the fact that the original use case for the quantum computer was to emulate nature. Nature is fantastically but also ridiculously complicated. Quantum mechanics is mind blowing, and it also doesn’t fit into our normal computers, which makes it really hard to predict, things such as how chemicals react in the body.”

Elham Kashefi, chief scientist of National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC, pointed out that there are still technical challenges ahead for both AI and quantum. And, if these technical challenges are surmounted, then scientists and businesses face ethical challenges.

“In order to really achieve everything that we’re dreaming of — drug discovery, Net Zero, quantum material science, et cetera — we have to address three key issues, both for AI and quantum: scalability, integrity and privacy,” said Kashefi.

The panel discussion aligned well with the overall theme of the talks at The City Quantum & AI Summit. The event’s discussions broadly focused on the integration of these technologies across industries such as finance, defense and healthcare, emphasizing their capacity to address global challenges like climate change and social equity.

Key sessions included panels on advancements in space exploration, the strategic importance of quantum and AI in defense systems, and their role in revolutionizing financial services. The summit underscored the necessity for collaboration between the public and private sectors to harness these technologies responsibly and effectively.

Complete discussion here.