by MIKE MAGEE<\/p>\n
THCB is back from its end of year break, but we are starting with a little catchup from December from Mike Magee.<\/em><\/p>\n As my wife often reminds me, \u201cComparisons are toxic.\u201d And, in general, I agree and try to respect this cardinal rule. But these are extraordinary times. So grant me this exception.<\/p>\n On December 9, 2024, in my early morning survey of the news, two articles demanded my attention. The first was an editorial in the New York Times with the self-explanatory title, \u201cMy Last Column: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment\u201d<\/a> by Paul Krugman. The second was an article published that morning in Nature <\/em>titled \u201cQuantum error correction below the surface code threshold\u201d<\/a> authored by \u201cGoogle Quantum AI and Collaborators,\u201d a blanket label for a team of 300+ engineers led by Founder and Leader, Hartmut Neven<\/a>. More on him in a moment.<\/p>\n As a loyal reader of Krugman, I read his \u201clast column\u201d carefully \u2013 twice. Over 25 years I\u2019ve admired this specialist\u2019s (global economics) willingness and interest to wander often into generalist, cross-sector, liberal arts territory. No match for his Nobel winning intellect or pure-bred education at MIT, Yale and Princeton, I do share a history of common geography (upstate New York in our early years, and the New York metropolitan area later on); an upbringing in religious households (Jewish and Catholic); and more than two uninterrupted decades of weekly published columns.<\/p>\n Though I have not always agreed with his take on every issue, I count myself as an admirer. The issues that have interested him, both pro and con, over the years, are more often than not the same issues that have troubled or encouraged me. So I was not surprised that he chose, in his \u201clast column,\u201d to reflect on the recent election, and the current levels of anger, violence and resentment in our society. And while I agree with the findings in his examination of the body politic, we arrived at a different diagnosis.<\/p>\n Krugman <\/a>writes, \u201cWhat strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then (25 years ago) and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. . . some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now . . . are billionaires who don\u2019t feel sufficiently admired.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the diagnosis, in response to the question he himself raises (\u201cWhy did this optimism curdle?\u201d), he answers, \u201cAs I see it, we\u2019ve had a collapse of trust in elites.\u201d And the treatment for this disease? \u201cif we stand up to the kakistocracy \u2014 rule by the worst \u2014 that\u2019s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.\u201d<\/p>\n Now that sent me back to Hartmut and the Nature article<\/a> for a reality check.\u00a0 Were American oligarchs and technocrats, with wild wealth and even wilder ideas, the cause of every day people jumping aboard the Trump cult train?<\/p>\n Nevin is 9 years younger than Krugman. He is a German-trained PhD physicist who came to the University of Southern California as an entrepreneurial research professor in computer science in 1998. His several start-ups <\/a>which were focused on \u201cface recognition technology and real-time facial feature analysis for avatar animation\u201d helped make him famous and rich when they were purchased by Google in 2006. But his fantastical dream was to create a \u201cquantum chip\u201d that would outperform anything that currently existed.<\/p>\n Six years later, he launched the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,<\/em> and by 2016, he had come up with an experiment (still ongoing) to prove \u201cquantum supremacy.\u201d Starting his own chip fabrication factory in Santa Barbara, his dream became concrete. He took a world view <\/a>in 2020, stating: \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not one company versus another, but rather, humankind versus nature \u2014 or humankind with nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevin believes he is in the right place at the right time. The AI Arms Race is full on and relies on ever increasing data consumption to support generative self-learning. That demands enormous consuming power. In his words<\/a>, \u201cBoth (quantum computing and AI) will prove to be the most transformational technologies of our time, but advanced AI will significantly benefit from access to quantum computing. This is why I named our lab Quantum AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Quantum computing is measured in \u201cqubits\u201d (which are the size of a single atom) versus the binary digit measure of standard computers, called the \u201cbit.\u201d As the New York Times<\/a> explained, \u201cQuantum bits, or \u2018qubits,\u2019 behave very differently from normal bits. A single object can behave like two separate objects at the same time when it is either extremely small or extremely cold.\u201d The test using exotic metals cooled to 460 degrees below zero, reported out on October 9th that Hartmut\u2019s quantum chip \u201cperformed a computation in under 5 minutes that would take one of today\u2019s fastest supercomputers 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 septillion) years to compute.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the amazing part. In past experiments, the device was error prone, and the more qubits, the less reliable the computations. But now, for the first time, this group was able to demonstrate the more qubits in play, the more accurate the outcome. As Nevin explained, \u201cThis historic accomplishment is known in the field as \u2018below threshold\u2019 \u2014 being able to drive errors down while scaling up the number of qubits.\u201d How big was that? According to Javad Shaman<\/a>, director of the Center for Quantum Information Physics at NYU, \u201cone of the highlights of the recent decade.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevin doesn\u2019t seem to \u201cworry about being admired.\u201d In his blog<\/a> this week he tied his qubit \u201cbelow threshold\u201d accomplishment to \u201chelping us discover new medicines, designing more efficient batteries for electric cars, and accelerating progress in fusion and new energy alternatives.\u201d That seems a far cry from Paul Krugman\u2019s highlighting<\/a> of \u201cthe pettiness of plutocrats who used to bask in public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can\u2019t buy you love.\u201d<\/p>\n Gallup has been conducting an annual survey of \u201cAmericans Satisfaction With The Way Things Are Going In The U.S.\u201d<\/a> for roughly a half century. Currently only 22% say they are satisfied. Back in 1986, that number peaked at 70%. That was the year that Robert Fulcrum wrote a little book that remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for nearly two years. Some criticized the book as \u201ctrite and saccharine,\u201d but 17 million copies of his books remain in circulation.<\/p>\n