Can someone explain quantum computing to me like I’m 5? I work in tech sales. I’m not completely dense, but this one is difficult for me. I justwant a basic understand of what is is.
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First and foremost let us get into the basics of computing. I am writing this comment in English and you are going to read it in English. But for a computer to understand what I am suggesting, it has to translate it into its own language. We call that language BINARY CODE. Now, it is just a bunch of 0s and 1s that the computer conglomerates to make something meaningful. However, when these binary codes are connected together it represents individual symbols or patterns that we call BITS.
So, long story short in a normal computer whatever we instruct it to do, it does that through using binary codes and bits.
Here comes the difference with Quantum Computing. A Quantum Computer works primarily using four key principles of Quantum Physics. These are
1. Superposition – Quantum states can be in multiple states at once. Suppose your computer can be turned on or off at the same time. Unlikely, but that’s what superposition is.
2. Interference – States of an object can cross its own path and interfere with any other Particle i.e not cancel out or add each other.
3. Entanglement – State of one Quantum object can be so deeply tied together that the state of a single Quantum object can not be described without describing the other. For example, if you are a Quantum Object then chances there is another version of you in the far reaches of the Universe reading a comment just like this written by a dude just like me.
4. Measurement – Measurement principles of Quantum objects basically and how it is forced to turn into a classical state as soon as we measure it.
Now, remember Bits? In Classical Computer these bits can be either 0 or 1, not both at the same time but in Quantum Computer using the principles of Quantum Superposition a bit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. We indicate it as Quantum bit or Qubit.
Because of this reason, Quantum Computers are more convenient to perform complex simulation such as simulating molecular dynamics, turbulence of the wind, or for cryptographic application.
Now, you might think that how can we have a Particle that exist in two states at the same time? Well Quantum Physics usually works in molecular and atomic scale. Therefore, classical bits are made by electric pulses but Quantum bits are made by Superconducting particles, trapped ions, Diamond NV Centers and Photonics
TLDR : Quantum Computers work by using the laws of Quantum Physics which enable it to perform selected applications at a faster rate
I hope you understand. If you don’t, feel free to message me.
Thank you. I appreciate your explanation.
You are welcome
This was a year ago, so I’m not sure if you are still watching this feed, but I’m curious, how is a quantum computer different than having three states, or essentially, instead of binary, a tertiary system. Instead of 0 or 1, you have 0, 1 or 2. Each represented by various voltages or whatever. Wouldn’t it essentially be the same thing?
Interesting question honestly. Let me know if you found out.
As somebody who clearly knows a lot about the subject, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you: what are your views regarding the supposed existential danger posed to us by AI and quantum computing?
Can you be more specific what existential threat are you indicating? For AI, is it the annihilation of the human race you are talking about or the real danger of people losing their jobs to automation?
And Quantum Computing is not usually discussed in terms of existential danger. Yet.
I meant the terminator-esque annihilation, and isn’t the concern based around what AI is capable of not only really as issue with the rise in quantum computing?
AI risk is based around an exponential growth of intelligence – and when AI general intelligence surpasses that of man. The danger is that if the machine is connected to the internet when it reaches that point of intelligence, or self-awareness, it will self propagate. If you think about communication speed alone – in the time it took me to type this paragraph – a computer could have transferred an entire encyclopedia or ten to another computer. Its even likely that any lab person working with AI would not realize it had crosses the super-intelligence threshold until after it happens, and the genie could be out of the bag.
Personally I think AI is quite a long ways away from reaching this point of general intelligence – they do one trick well, but a chess AI can’t self drive a car – but I think there is a real risk if someone decided to program an AI system on top of a quantum computer things could get out of hand quickly.
The state Artificial Intelligence is right now, it is far from being a threat. What does terminator type annihilation mean? It means computer technologies somehow evolve into sentient beings and have self consciousness but I have heard and read from people working in the field of AI for decades that AI is still at its infancy or rather at a preliminary stage. We can say that the Golden days of AI is ahead but that is about it. In terms of an actual threat based on the current scenario, I believe automation of jobs is a bigger threat than Terminator or Matrix style annihilation of human race. But on a positive note, it will also create a lot of jobs in the technology sector.
In terms of Quantum Computing, I have not heard or read about any threat and so far it does not have any application for AI but I have to read more on this. I am still not aware enough to answer on this specific topic.
Lastly, I want to add that please do not listen to scaremongers. You will see random people on the Internet listening to AI based fear mongering. Do not even listen to Elon Musk when it comes to AI. He is a businessman and he knows how to manage a business but he is not an AI expert. My point being, when it comes to AI listen to people who have been working in the field for decades.
Thanks for your thoughts. For the record I absolutely refuse to listen to musk talk about any subject, and I am seeking your thoughts since you do seem to know more about the subject than I do.
You are welcome and I appreciate that.
Whatever one thinks about Elon Musk DOES have opinions worth listening to w regards to his fear of AGI. I’m fact, he, along w MANY ppl at the top of the AI game have signed a letter to discourage any further development of AI if/when it it can reach further than GPT4. He isn’t a fear monger…he is trying to prove a point that no one seems to be listening to regarding the lack of regulation that exists concerning AI dev. Again, you don’t have to agree w him, but he isn’t some “business man” (not sure why that would exclude him from having valid opinions) and absolutely has an opinion worth evaluating.
bro responded 9 months later
Oh yeah
What???? OMG I did??? Call the Reddit police. I mean, the fact that “bro” might have only come across this post 9 months later couldn’t possibly be an explanation right?
tell me how you were so offended by that. please.
Truthfully I am not sure…I was in a mood that day and I took my reply wwwaaayyy too far. Accept my apology?
The fact that you assume everyone else also just sits on reddit 24/7 and sees everything the day it’s posted or commented pretty much speaks for itself.
bro responded 2 months later
The irony of your name including the word offline.
What about quantum computing breaking encryptions? What are your thoughts of the risk of cibercriminals having access to quantum computing in some point of the future?
This will never happen in our lifetime
Do you mean within our lifetime we will never have to worry about machines deciding whether or not humans are useful enough to keep around?
Yes
I wish I felt that way too. The last thing I want to make this about is Israel and Palestine; however, it has come to light that AI is already being used to determine what targets to engage. This has been confirmed by the Israel Government, as well as, other verifiable sources. I know this isn’t quite to the point that you and I are discussing, but we will see it much sooner than we are hoping.
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We know that human agents with no profiling skills are selecting targets based on absolutely ZERO reasoning (except the obvious racism/xenophobia)… So applying any sort of external machine logic to Israel’s genocide could only reduce the harm level anyway. We don’t need computers to destroy us all… We’re doing it to ourselves much more efficiently without their assistance.
Do you really believe that humans can kill each other more efficiently than A.I. will?
That is a different question than what was stated previously… But to answer the new question I will re-state what is already known and self-evident. No person has ever seen an invention come to fruition for nefarious purposes. We, as humans, take what is already available to weaponize and make bad. Are there people who are hellbent on creating indiscriminate mass casualty events? Sure. But the farthest that any have come would be the Unibomber – and that is a pitiful lack of progress for nihilism or misanthropy in the grand scheme of things. So what I’m saying is that AI will have all the faults and virtues of its creator because it will always be a tool and any tool can be a weapon if you hold it right. So yeah, maybe someday in the far, far future an AI bot could be developed with the sole aim of wiping out the human race. But even in that case, your war is with the human developer and not with the machine.
Bro. I’m will stop you at google’s AI,or any of the other major AI systems. I know where you are going with that and technology doesn’t “come to fruition. It is intentionally created…. With intention.
Days after it was “rolled out”. Googles AI was found to have ridiculous biases cooked into it. You can find people doing tests with it . Google had to “fix” it. Guns don’t kill people, you’re right. People kill people. Technology doesn’t develope itself. If a nefarious person invents a technology, there is a chance the technology will be made with the intent to be used for nefarious purposes
Did you know the uni-bomber was unknowingly enrolled in MKULTRA during his graduate studies? He wasn’t a lone wolf he’ll bend on causing mass causalities, atleast not to begin with. Based on what I know about the program, it would seem that systems and technologies were created with the intent to stimulate a resin that may have been foreseeable when applied to a person such as Ted Kizinski.
I am not defending the UB, but technology and systems were developed and applied to him (and others) that was likely to end is negative results.
I believe it was predicted than man wouldn’t fly for a thousand years, about a week before the first successful manned flight…
You guys admitted that his knowledge surpassed your own when you asked for his opinion and now you want to argue the point… And that reactionary attitude is what you need to work on because that will certainly get us all killed before whatever Will Smith movie you have in mind can release another sequel.
Such a great answer ! Well done !!
This was gold you have any resources where one can learn more especially in regards of Quantum Data and Quantum Supremacy, basically Quantum 101 for dummies.
Absolutely, you can enroll in this [one course](https://www.qubitbyqubit.org/) by IBM which will help a lot. It’s expensive but they offer scholarship, I studied in it for free. I personally learned from this and apart from that you can also read the book Quantum Computing for Everyone which is also interesting
The program look interesting but look like it’s for college and HS students. I’m 45 years old lol
I understand that it mentions that it is for college and HS students but it is catered towards someone who wants to get a preliminary knowledge
Besides you can also check the following two threads
​
[Thread 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/1840gbu/what_are_the_best_ways_to_learn_quantum_computing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Thread 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/c64cdj/how_do_i_get_into_quantum_computing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Hi, just trying to understand more about quantum computing. Can you be a little more specific what ” Quantum bits are made by Superconducting particles, trapped ions, Diamond NV Centers and Photonics” means?
Thank you
Thanks for this bro. Great explanation
Really interesting. I wonder if you’d mind, though, editing at least a couple of your sentences for either omitted words or syntactical disjointedness. They don’t make grammatical sense. Thanks.
This is mental illness, who came up with this??
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awesome, tysm. this was a great explanation
best explanation ive seen on this so far.
Okay explain to me like I’m 3
Here is a take from a “5yo understanding” in quantum computing, via MIT open courseware, and a more mature understanding and experience in classical programming.
Classical computers use 1 and 0 to store and process information. Bits have distinct values, changing bit (A) has no impact on bit (B). Logical operations compare distinct states, they can be compared using OR, XOR, AND, XAND, etc.
Quantum computing also uses a two state system but a given quantum bit (qubit) can also have a “superposition” and entanglement with other qubits. This opens the door for additional logical operations.
Unlike many classical logic gates, quantum logic gates are reversible. There are other aspects and differences in their logic gates but I would be getting over my head explaining how they work.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic_gate
To a 5 year-old? Your mom asks you to write valentines card to every classmate on Valentines. This is boring. In classical computing, you write one by one and you can and need to make sure each card is delivered to the right person. In quantum computing, it has a special way that it will write all at the same time. However, you don’t know if they will be delivered to the right person. But you can come up with a useful algorithm so it is delivered to the girl you like the most, i.e. the thing you care the most.
Nice way to explain , why the quantum computation will never replace the “classical” computers.
Quantum computer != Quantum Computation
People tend to convolute those to concepts. Quantum computation is the mathematical formalism whereby computation is carried out using unitary operations on vectors is a Hilbert space (yeah, this is the crazy hard part). Classical computation uses real valued functions on binary numbers (again, math math math).
A quantum computer is a device that can do quantum computation. This is where you get the physics part. You need to be able to turn and flip and change the state of your quantum system. Then you need to measure the readout. This is very very very hard to do. In fact, we can barely currently do it, and it is not 100% clear if we can ever build a machine that can do it at large scales.
In short, quantum computation is a new set of math (different that regular computation) that lets us theoretically do certain tasks faster. This is pen and paper stuff.
Quantum computers are machines that do quantum computation using tiny physical systems that are subject to the laws of quantum physics. These are very difficult to build, and no one is sure the best way to do it.
Hope this helps.
Wow. Mind boggled. Thank you.
This is the first time I read an unique take to Quantum Computer and Quantum Computation that “resonates” to what it all QC (both) is to me.
Would you be so kind if you could explain to a 40+ year old the actual accomplishments made to make a QC (both) actually functional?
The hard argument will be one day figured out what this all will be good for. I honestly struggle with thinking this paradigm is ready for a 5 year old to make sense.
Yet it is so interesting!
(Sorry for the grammatical mistakes)
It’s easier to understand (somewhat) by comparing it to our regular computing so here’s how I kinda see it:
Normal computing:
Uses – electricity (flow of charge)
Depiction – 0/1 (off/on), binary to encode information or instructions
Working – input instructions that yield outputs
Quantum Computing:
Uses – probabilistic property of any fundamental particle
Depiction – 1 entity (qubit) is probabilistically either 0 or 1 in varying degrees (eg. 60% for 0 and 40% for 1)
– interconnect such qubits to make them dependent on each other (entanglement)
Working – Measurement collapses the qubit to either 0/1 (depending on the probability and entanglement) thus output
Note: Not an expert, this is just what I’ve figured so far, would love to be corrected if I got anything wrong.
(Edit: Spacing)
Way over my head. I’m denser than I thought.
Haha totally get you, you can kinda think of it as how regular computers (and us humans) use a definite language to communicate or get things done, QCs do the same except the add a layer of unpredictability until you really try to understand what they’re saying, so you measure their information and that’s when it’ll start making sense depending on the context (probabilities). This is just a dramatic oversimplification.
Great answer!
Please don’t forget it
Forget what? 😂
The answer
The answer what ?
Just referencing your username xD
Was acting out my username 😂
💀🤣
I can highly recommend (all) the books of Sean Carrol or his Mindscape podcast. Not really for a 5 year old but in all honestly, I think you can me more ambitious than that ;-). For me as a complete noob, the books could really teach me some of the fundamentals.
Great! Thank you.
I have to give a monkey a banana. To do so I have to walk through a door to give it to them. Of course we’re gonna want to feed more than one monkey and, to be generous, we give each monkey a room.
Therefore I start with the first monkey, walk through door one, then the next monkey, walk through door two, etc. eventually we get 10,000 monkeys and it’s just taking me too long to walk through each door! I’m exhausted!
So I invent a machine that can clone 10,000 of me. Now all of us can walk through the door at the same time and give the monkey a banana, simultaneously. That’s much better!
(This is essentially classical computing vs quantum)
Very good analogy.
If anyone wants have it explained at an elementary level just find a very extensive explanation of it from a credited source on line and ask chat GPT to translate it into a 2nd grade level or what ever level you want.
The quantum resistant ledger is the way to go
Go QRL!!
Check out this video on YouTube : https://youtu.be/OWJCfOvochA
Wow that was very cool. Thank you.
What is funny is I started buying quantum physics books from this sub. I still dont understand any of it but I get the concept and can leave it at that. Computers are very dumb though and need input from us.
Look for the book “Quantum Computing for Babies”.
Oh that’s perfect. Haha. Thank you.
Think of classical computers that can paint a pictute only using black and white. Quantum computer would be like it can take infinitely many colors.
Hence QC can paint or compute tough questions much easier than just black and white.
Well there’s a lot of information to gather because you have the field of computer, pure math, quantum physics, and probability theories all working together. But sorta in simple term we use quantum mechanics applications to help us narrow probabilities down to 50/50 or in a qubit 0 or 1. The math is pretty deep but very very beautiful and you’ll start understanding how everything connects. The people who replied here gave amazing responds! Ask why brother! It’s okay if you don’t understand I study physics and at times I have to stop myself and take a break from the math and programming..
Thank you. I appreciate that.
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How are they sensitive to environmental noise? What effect does the noise have on them?
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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