Nobel Prize Winner: Nobody Sees What's Coming After AI

0:00 The skills you're building right now are for the AI era,

0:03 but they have an expiration date.

0:04 Every few years, something comes along that changes what's actually possible.

0:08 The internet didn't make libraries faster, it made them irrelevant.

0:12 AI didn't make search engines better.

0:14 It made a completely different way of finding answers.

0:18 And now we have something that's coming

0:20 that most people haven't even heard of yet.

0:23 And it does the same thing to computing itself.

0:26 In December 2024, Google unveiled a quantum

0:29 processor that completed a calculation in minutes.

0:32 That exact calculation that would take today's

0:35 supercomputers longer than the age of the universe.

0:38 And that is a different category of a machine.

0:41 And here's where it gets a little scary.

0:43 A few days ago, Google published another paper.

0:45 They say quantum computers could crack Bitcoin encryption in 9

0:49 minutes using 20 times fewer resources than anyone thought.

0:53 As someone who holds crypto and is curious

0:56 about implications of quantum on my day-to-day life, I wanted to ask questions.

1:01 So, I was in Davos this January and I met

1:03 the man whose 1985 discovery made all of this possible.

1:07 He just won the Nobel Prize for it and President Donald Trump

1:11 just put him on his science advisory council alongside with Mark Zuckerberg,

1:15 Sergey Brin and Jensen Huan.

1:17 He's the only scientist in that room and he gave me a timeline 5 to 10 years.

1:22 And to understand why this matters for your career,

1:25 you need to understand what he actually discovered.

1:28 Let's talk to John Martinez.

1:31 I wanted to talk to you about something that you discovered.

1:34 So I don't have any experience in quantum physics, but the way I understood it,

1:38 if you throw a ball against the wall, it bumps, right?

1:41 But you discovered that an electron

1:43 can pass the wall without passing it and be on both sides.

1:47 Yeah.

1:47 So, it's possible that the the ball, you know,

1:50 the wall can tunnel through the wall uh and and not just bounce off,

1:55 but every once in a while actually tunnel through it.

1:58 And the way I like to say it is that, you know,

2:00 people are accustomed at quantum mechanics is

2:03 the physics of atoms and molecules and microscopic particles.

2:07 In here, we made electrical circuit about that big.

2:11 And the currents and voltages in that big macroscopic electrical circuit

2:16 is actually u obeying quantum mechanics and showing this tunneling phenomenon.

2:21 That's the moment quantum stopped being just theory.

2:24 He proved it works in machines and that's what started everything.

2:28 So before this discovery,

2:30 scientists thought quantum mechanics only lived inside atoms.

2:34 He proved it works in machines.

2:36 So what does that unlock?

2:38 What really happened uh with with this idea and frankly it's the reason

2:43 for the Nobel Prize is that we took this discovery and then people built

2:49 on it built on it and then the idea of build quits and building

2:54 a quantum computer came along which natural

2:56 our this physics naturally fit into this.

3:00 So uh it's really kind of the the creation of a field of discovery

3:07 and innovation and technology that these experiments

3:11 got developed into and why it's important today.

3:14 Yeah.

3:14 When you when you say quantum computer, a lot of people think science fiction.

3:18 For people who don't know how it affects

3:20 their daily lives or might affect their daily lives,

3:22 can you give two or three examples

3:23 where quantum computers really make a difference?

3:26 Um the the idea I like to talk about is

3:31 um for uh doing design of materials or molecules or chemistry.

3:39 And uh people are are very familiar right

3:42 now how you use computers to design your kitchen,

3:48 make a mechanical part, design electronic circuit, uh you know other things.

3:54 So you can build it virtually.

3:57 Yeah.

3:56 And then when you go and you build it in the real world,

4:00 building it virtually in the digital is a lot

4:03 cheaper and better and you can think about the tradeoffs.

4:06 Well, a quantum computer would enable you to do that with molecules

4:11 and you know certain atomic molecules moving part.

4:15 What about drug discovery?

4:16 I feel like if we're Yes.

4:17 And the same kind of thing uh with drug discovery.

4:21 So if you can simulate molecules really well then

4:26 uh you can maybe even just gain some insight.

4:29 I mean what I've been told is that for example the drug

4:32 discovery it's very expensive to do this and if you can improve let's

4:37 just say your insight on how the drug works by 1% or few

4:41 percent that's really valuable and could be worth a lot of money.

4:45 Yeah.

4:45 So, so it's not like we have to totally change things,

4:48 but uh um I I think just improvements

4:51 and better insights can be quite valuable for companies.

4:55 But if we go 10 years forward, what do you think our life is going to look

4:59 like if quantum computing is everywhere and accessible to everyone?

5:02 How's it going to change?

5:04 So, um there's kind of two things involved in this.

5:07 First of all, we have to build better hardware.

5:10 And then we have to be, you know,

5:12 think about algorithms, be smarter with the algorithms and the like.

5:16 And there's just kind of a gap now.

5:18 And maybe some people think there's not much

5:20 of a gap and other people think there's a big gap, but we need to close the gap.

5:25 And that's building better hardware, which is what I'm doing in my company.

5:30 We're trying to do that, as well as many other people.

5:33 And then people have to be more clever.

5:35 And what's interesting is you build better hardware,

5:38 you can test out the algorithms better

5:41 and then you can maybe discover exactly what's,

5:44 you know, what you need to get it to work right.

5:47 So it's a very interesting time where, you know,

5:49 we're everyone's really trying to to push

5:52 these things together and get it to work properly.

5:55 Yeah, it feels like it's a really fast growing market.

5:57 According to Quantum Insider report,

5:59 it's going to generate $1 trillion in economic value in the next 10 years.

6:04 uh with that's a optimistic scenario that we find useful things to do.

6:09 It's quite possible that will happen and certainly I

6:12 like those kind of forecasts because when we try to company Yeah.

6:16 But our idea is that what we're really trying to do

6:19 in our company is make a general purpose error corrected

6:23 quantum computer and not at hundreds of cub physical cubits what

6:28 are people now but you may need a million physical cubits

6:32 operating in the way with the errors go down

6:35 and and and it works properly where I think the real value

6:39 will be unlocked and you know the long-term value certainly there

6:44 you know if people do this in the next few years,

6:47 you'll get you'll get good value.

6:49 But the those kind of numbers you're talking about, you know,

6:53 our thesis is you're want to build this big computer and make it very well.

6:59 As you might have realized, I had this conversation with John at Davos.

7:03 And honestly, every conversation during World

7:06 Economic Forum was with someone like John,

7:08 a Nobel Prize winner, a professor, a founder of an AI company.

7:13 And then you walk out knowing something important was said,

7:15 but by the time you sit down to act on it, you've lost the nuance,

7:19 the exact words, what was the tool that he mentioned,

7:22 what was the hack that was going to work for my case.

7:25 And that's the problem this device solves.

7:28 It's called plot.

7:29 Guest calls, partner calls, internal team syncs,

7:32 the conversations that actually move things forward.

7:35 This little device records and analyzes everything.

7:38 It's a small wearable, one press to record.

7:42 No phone on the table between you and the person you're talking to.

7:45 You stay fully present in the conversation

7:47 and afterwards you get a structured summary,

7:50 decisions, next steps, key insights,

7:52 10,000 plus templates by conversation type, industry, and language.

7:56 So what you get back actually reflects what the meeting was.

8:00 This is our conversation with John.

8:01 Here's the transcript.

8:03 Every speaker labeled and here's the summary.

8:05 Key insights, action items pulled automatically.

8:08 1.5 million people use it.

8:10 98 transcription accuracy works in person on Zoom over

8:14 the phone and it fits in my phone's case.

8:17 Find the link in the description.

8:18 If you're having conversations that matter,

8:21 and clearly you are cuz you're here, this device is worth checking out.

8:24 And of course, you always disclose when you record conversations.

8:27 That's natural.

8:29 So, he's betting on hardware the way Jensen Huang

8:32 bet on GPUs before anyone knew what they were for.

8:36 Now that's the question that has been

8:38 on my mind since I heard about quantum computing.

8:41 Yeah.

8:41 What what do you think for all the entrepreneurs who

8:43 are watching who want to start building something in this field?

8:46 What are the most uh exciting markets when it comes to quantum computing?

8:50 Is it building hardware or is it like applying the algorithms?

8:55 Well, there's a lot of effort into algorithms because

8:59 building software and algorithms is a relatively low cost.

9:04 You don't have to buy those.

9:05 So our company is doing the exact wrong

9:08 thing which is investing in building hardware really well.

9:12 Now the nice thing is is that once you do that you

9:17 can be and you're successful you can be extremely successful company.

9:21 And I I uh I like to think about Nvidia although they're partnering

9:26 with TSMC but their knowledge of designing

9:30 the computers and putting together the systems have

9:33 made them extremely uh valuable company and and our view on hardware is

9:40 that um you know it's possible for us to do that uh through that too.

9:44 So we're taking the hard approach

9:47 uh and and focusing on the hardware.

9:50 And then our particular thesis is that if you

9:53 look at superconducting cubits right now and where they are,

9:56 I mean I helped invent all the things to get there.

10:00 Um and uh I think it's great and but it's still kind

10:04 of um uh little bit I say academic or maybe even artisal uh fabrication

10:11 and that we're trying to use much

10:13 more established semiconductor uh tools and fabrication

10:17 process and the like in order to scale up and make the cubits better.

10:22 Yeah.

10:22 And when it comes to markets,

10:24 what do you think are the markets that are going to be transformed the most?

10:27 We talked about healthcare, finance, any other way.

10:31 It's all all of the above and and you hear people working working on that.

10:36 But I like that we have very definite um ideas on how to build it.

10:41 So let me I can explain this for maybe some of the Silicon Valley types.

10:46 I really love Peter Thiel's book 0ero to one.

10:50 Okay.

10:51 And that kind of in some sense explained my uh my career.

10:56 So I am very much a definite optimist.

10:59 I want to know what to build.

11:00 I want to know what to build to make it useful.

11:04 And that's what that paper was all about.

11:06 Now there's a lot of people in this field who are indefinite optimists.

11:10 In fact, most people in the United States are

11:13 and they they have all the ideas like you're talking about.

11:16 And I think that's great.

11:17 I'm glad people are pushing that.

11:20 my particular uh way my mind works and what's always been successful

11:26 is to really focus in on something definite you have to do.

11:30 However, I'm very well aware you're in a startup company,

11:33 you'll probably have to pivot.

11:35 Yeah.

11:35 And think about different things and we'd be

11:37 happy to do that once those ideas come to.

11:41 But the one thing I know for sure is we have

11:42 to make better cubits and we have to make it scale.

11:45 We need the hardware.

11:46 We need the hardware and Okay.

11:48 So that's what we're doing no matter what happens.

11:50 Yeah.

11:50 Uh I think so this question has been bothering me for a while.

11:54 I think you're the right person to ask.

11:56 Is quantum computing going to break cryptocurrencies?

12:00 Um so um my uh the CEO of my company is an expert

12:05 here and I'm going to hopefully uh re re represent it well enough.

12:13 M um my understanding is if you have some

12:17 of the older crypto currency that was encoded in a way

12:21 that could be broken but um some of the it's

12:25 the newer versions it's um it's a little bit stiffer encryption.

12:29 Is that Bitcoin the oldest?

12:30 I I think this is Bitcoin as I recall.

12:33 So that one's and then you can take your old Bitcoin

12:37 and um you know pull it out and then reenrypt it to make it make it better.

12:42 Okay.

12:42 So you can make it safe.

12:45 Okay.

12:44 But there's a lot of Bitcoin that's kind

12:46 of unclaimed that's old and it's a lot of money.

12:50 Oh, interesting.

12:51 So quantum computer computing breaks into that.

12:54 So that is a market for a quantum computer business idea.

12:59 Well, so we're aware of that.

13:01 Okay.

13:02 And that's fine.

13:03 Now what my CEO is doing, which I think is very responsible,

13:09 is talking to the US Treasury about this.

13:12 Mhm.

13:12 Because the US Treasury is going to be concerned

13:15 that if other companies or uh you know criminal organizations

13:21 get get a hold of that money, it's a lot of money.

13:24 Yeah, it is that um you know that's a real issue and you probably want to set

13:29 up laws and some system in order to uh you know do that.

13:34 Yeah.

13:34 Because it's still very unregulated.

13:35 There's so much crypto ledgers or Yeah.

13:37 And and that's the problem is you have something very unregulated

13:41 which people really like but in some sense that's the Achilles Hill.

13:47 Yeah.

13:46 That because it's unregulated if some technology can overcome it.

13:50 And so you may you know there may need to be some

13:53 plot on how to how to now I'm not an expert here

13:56 but no I think I'm getting this kind of directionally correct.

14:01 I talk to the people building what's next before it makes headlines.

14:06 If that's useful to you, do not forget to subscribe to this channel.

14:10 What is the timeline that you think?

14:13 So, what I like to say is um u it's possible in 5

14:18 to 10 years to build this a big enough quantum computer to do that.

14:22 Mhm.

14:23 Uh and uh partly I just say that that's kind of an optimistic scenario

14:28 and part I partly I say that is to warn people that you know this may

14:33 be coming and you want to protect you know every not just bitcoin but you

14:38 know the whole internet needs to switch over uh in this kind of time period.

14:44 Yeah.

14:45 Now what's interesting and and just I was

14:47 at a at a a meeting where the IBM kind of quoted similar numbers.

14:52 This is all very reasonable.

14:54 It's funny that at Google the CEO is is saying three to five years.

15:00 H to try and push things.

15:01 Well, I think he's pushing because if

15:03 you're a CEO and you're making a prediction,

15:06 you want to you want to have a lower number because you don't want to be caught,

15:10 you know, without that.

15:11 But for example, Google already has quantum resistant

15:14 protocols on at least some of their their traffic.

15:17 I don't know the details, but you know,

15:19 these big companies already know about it and are

15:22 protecting protecting their data or will be protecting their data.

15:28 Yeah.

15:27 But but there's things like crypto that you know that's beyond beyond

15:31 that and other kind of uh private systems that you might have to worry about.

15:35 That was very interesting.

15:36 So basically we're working on quantum computing but then we

15:39 also need to work on the algorithms that protect existing systems.

15:42 Yeah.

15:42 And what happened is actually the idea that you

15:46 can break it break it with this uh it was

15:49 invented in the 1990s people understood that well Peter

15:54 Shore and then you know in the early early 1990s

15:58 and then um uh the government you know really

16:01 has understood this for a long time and I'm going

16:04 to say about 10 maybe 12 years ago uh

16:08 the government got very serious about this and they saw

16:12 that yeah okay the technology maybe you know could

16:15 make this happen and for example at NIST they have

16:19 a big program that they're looking at what they called

16:22 quantum safe cryptography other ways to encode it and that's

16:27 that's been 10 years they have a nice algorithms

16:32 uh people you know you can download essentially the algorithm

16:35 and code and people are are building systems to do

16:39 this so um people have been responding to this.

16:42 Well, you can buy solutions here.

16:45 Uh and uh you know, so I think we're in in in pretty good shape.

16:49 I think people are still, you know, investigate.

16:52 You know, part of the thing about the crypto security is people have to try

16:56 to break it for a long time to make sure that it's really safe.

17:00 I mean, people don't know that RSA is unbreakable.

17:05 RSA for sure but they know from practice that you know uh and the way

17:10 that the everything's operating that they don't think anyone's has broken it.

17:16 Yeah.

17:15 So so it needs time to do this.

17:17 You know you you're observing extremely rare uh extreme extremely

17:21 rare events and you're building something that is completely new.

17:25 Has that changed how you think about luck black

17:28 swan moments because you're observing them basically in your work.

17:32 Um what's kind of uh strange in my career is um I've been developing

17:41 a series of experiments uh and um uh how I've gone from you know one project

17:50 to the other and what's kind of funny in my career is I do a project

17:56 and then somehow it doesn't work out

17:58 in some way and then I'm you stuck wondering,

18:03 well, I have to do something else and um and then

18:07 I figure out what else to do that's really interesting.

18:11 So, changing all the the different topics and projects

18:17 is has always come through some strange event, often kind of a negative event.

18:23 And just to give you an example, I was I went to Google, they paid me well,

18:29 we did this quantum supremacy experiment and uh

18:32 but then at some point after the quantum supremacy,

18:36 they wanted to change the way they managed the group and essentially I

18:42 was not googly enough to stay at Google and I had to leave

18:47 which was u you know kind of difficult to to essentially

18:50 leave a project you started way back in graduate school.

18:54 However, by leaving Google,

18:57 I was then free to think very creatively and free to think, well,

19:02 we're building in a certain way and how do I really

19:05 want to build this to make it scalable and better and whatever.

19:09 And by starting my own company and through

19:11 think thinking freely and you know starting it

19:15 with the co-founders we were able to come

19:18 with with a bunch of ideas how to make it better.

19:23 Yeah.

19:22 And it could be that although that was a very let's

19:25 say traumatic uh thing I'm sure other people have gone through

19:28 this that may be the best thing for me and the field

19:33 that I was able to do something something new out of it.

19:37 Absolutely.

19:37 And so you know that's one thing and and this has

19:41 happened to me over and over again and you I

19:44 kind of have to accept that you know that's you

19:47 sometimes these setbacks in life are actually very good for you.

19:50 So the good thing is this year I just kind of I

19:53 knew it was coming up but I totally forgot about it.

19:56 So when the phone call came it was a complet middle of the night.

20:00 Well, and it was my wife was awake

20:03 and she saw she heard the phone phone ringing,

20:06 but she thought she'd catch it in the morning and then she was just

20:10 going to sleep and she looked

20:11 at her email and there was all these congratulations,

20:14 but that was like, you know, 2:30 in the morning.

20:20 Yeah.

20:18 And she knows I need my sleep.

20:21 So, um, she didn't tell me uh until about 6:00.

20:27 dad, you know, because I needed my sleep.

20:30 And also, there were reporters who were coming to that house

20:34 and they wanted to wake me up in bed

20:37 and she she pushed them away like, "Let him get his no way we going to do that."

20:44 Wow.

20:43 But, um, I do remember her like, you know, sitting in the bed and, you know,

20:49 waking me up gently and saying, "Hey,

20:51 there's some reporters." And and, you know, I kind of I do.

20:55 It's October.

20:56 So I I just opened my computer and I saw,

20:59 you know, my picture there with the with John and Michelle.

21:02 So that was a very like it's just you can't believe that it it's happening.

21:07 Sounds like a fairy tale.

21:08 It's a fairy tale.

21:09 And what I would say is I think the most interesting part is you get

21:13 to go to things like this uh and and see have these very amazing experiences.

21:20 Here's what I actually walked away with.

21:22 JP Morgan and Google aren't waiting for quantum to be ready.

21:26 They are already deploying it.

21:27 The race is happening whether your industry knows it or not.

21:31 The encryption protecting everything you do online, your bank,

21:34 your company data, your messages was built before quantum computers existed.

21:39 John's timeline 5 to 10 years.

21:41 So that's not a distant problem.

21:43 If you work in tech, finance or cyber security,

21:45 this is the conversation I think we should be having right now.

21:49 In my newsletter this week, I mapped out which industries are most exposed

21:53 right now and what people in those fields

21:56 are actually doing about it and how can

21:59 you start adjusting your career for what's to come.

22:01 My newsletter is called Future Proof.

22:03 The link is in the description.

22:05 Quantum is 5 to 10 years out.

22:08 AI is right now.

22:09 I talked to a Stanford professor about exactly what to do in the next 30 days.

22:15 That video is right here on the screen.

22:17 It is very practical.

22:18 It's going to make you excited about AI

22:19 and excited about introducing it into your workflows.

22:22 See you in that episode and thank you for watching this up to the very end.