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This is a seeking Delphi special edition
South by Southwest 2018 mini cast the
endless impossibilities of quantum
computing featuring whurly,  recorded on
site in Austin Texas March 12 2018. I'm
Mark Sackler, the future lives here
William Hurley AKA whurly is a
technology guru and entrepreneur. He is
somebody who is inventing the future. His
keynote address on quantum computing was the
highlight of the Intelligent Future
track at South by Southwest and the
culmination of IEEE's tech for
Humanity series, packed the largest
Ballroom in the Austin Convention Center.
with IEEE's kind assistance I was
able to sit down with him afterwards for
this exclusive interview. MARK:  I am with
technologist and entrepreneur
extraordinaire William Hurley known
better as whurly.    Thank you for joining
me>
WHURLEY: Hey, thank you for having me MARK: So the first
thing I want to ask you about in terms
of quantum computing which was what you
talked about as your keynote at South By
today, is you know I'm looking at your
history you started with big companies
you moved to smaller and then you're
starting companies. What what is it in
the last couple of years that created a
passion for you about quantum computing?
WHURLEY: So I've been watching quantum computing
for about 3 to 5 years and I've been
really tracking it for the last couple
of years almost you know little little
after I started Honest Dollar.  I always as
entrepreneur like to know the next two
or three things that I might start a
company on and work on and so for me it
was robotics, bio hacking,  and quantum. So I've been watching all of those and when
and I thought you know where I can make
the most impact where things are the
most interesting intellectually and
where I think the timing is right in the
market is quantum computing. MARK: Now your talk
today was entitled  "The Endless
Impossibilities of Quantum Computing."  I
can't figure out whether that's
redundant or an oxymoron a little of
both. What do you mean by "the endless
impossibilities?"
WHURLEY:  So actually you know what we mean is
there's all of these things that we
think of as impossible right that
computers could do.  You know some people
think AI is impossible. Some people think
you know we'll never be able to to do
certain things with drug discovery and
individualization of drugs and all these
different things, and so instead of
saying you know these are all the
possibilities I thought you know we've
be kind of clever and tongue in cheek about it and say
here are all the impossible things that
this could probably bring about.   MARK:  That's
 interesting you said that we
should all be fascinated with quantum
computing.   Why?  WHURLEY: Because you know I think
that this is a moment in time it's a
very special moment in time I mean if
you think back to when the mainframes
came to exist answer you know the best
example for me is the homebrew computer
club.  Right?  If you think back to those
days I think the people in quantum today
are kind of like the people that were in the
homebrew Computer Club back in the day,
And so this is a movement this is a very
special moment in time where this new
technology that has been you know roots
all the way back to the 1830s and Ada
Lovelace is finally at an inflection
point where it's gonna become important
and in 20 years and 30 years and 40
years I think we'll be reading stories
about all the people I'm working with
and that we're at the session today
because then there'll be you know the
the pioneers or the the visionaries of
the people who did really really cool
stuff.  Because I think the time is now
and because of that I think it's
absolutely fascinating I'm fascinated
with it and I think everybody else
should be too. Computing will change more
in the next 10 years than it has in the
last hundred.  MARK: Another thing you talked
about today was humanizing quantum
computing.  What is it what exactly does
that mean?  I mean it's a pretty arcane
technology to most of us.  WHURLEY:  So what that
means to me--okay--is that right now that
think about back in the day when you
learned how to program a computer you
had to be an electrical engineer you had
to understand the voltage between the
gates, then you had to understand the
gates, now most of these developers in
may not even know that
computers have gates. Okay, right now you
have to be a physicist to program a
quantum computer.
I want to take that to the next phase to
where we can expand that circle to a lot
wider audience
to a much larger group.  To do that I have
to take this incredibly complex topic--
remember, I'm not a physicist;  I'm
certainly not theoretical physicist. 
I'm not a theoretical mathematician.  I'm
not a discrete mathematician, and I have
to take all of these incredibly
technical, incredibly complex topics and
find a way to get the masses of
developers that have the ability to
write software to understand enough of
them to start trying to write quantum
computing software.  That's important
because of this: think about back to the
iPhone. Nokia already had an app store.  We
already had capacitive screens the
iPhone got put together and all of a
sudden there was this explosion of
  solutions you know it doesn't
matter if it's Uber, TurboTax, or whatever
the case might be. A bunch of apps, a
bunch of things that for better or worse
you know it came out of that.  We don't
have that in quantum computing.
There's Shor's algorithm and Grover's
algorithm.  There's a quantum Zoo you can
go check out, but there's there's not a
killer app for quantum and I believe
that's because right now it remains in
the realm of the physicists.  It's like
Prometheus and fire.  Right?  Right now the
physicists have the fire, and I want to
try to take that to everybody and then
not die and have my guts eaten over and
over for eternity because that sounds
horrible.  But you know that's what I mean
when I say humanizing is bringing it
down lowering the barriers to entry and
getting more people comfortable with the
concepts and comfortable with working
this concept.  MARK:  How do we do that and how
far away is it?  WHURLEY: Well I've just started a
new company called Strangeworks to
focus all of my time and attention on
that so I have it's not in the to too
distant future.  I think that's a three to
five year plot.
We just announced today a deal with you
know beta with Stack Overflow which is
where all developers go to you know
learn about code and writing code, to
where we have quantum computing Stack
Exchange dot com, which is the place where
everybody can go and ask questions and
get answers and start playing around
with some of the tools that are
available.  So hopefully that will be the
beginning of a movement
next few years will grow from dozens of
developers into hundreds or hundreds of
thousands of developers.   MARK: Now the
technology in terms of environmentally
it requires a quantum computing requires
that there's it needs very cold and a
very isolated environment to prevent
decoherence.  You know this is not
something that's going to be on a
consumers desktop.  Will consumers en
masse use it or at least be cognizant at
some point of quantum computing or is it
just going to run quietly in the
background without any realization on
the part of most people that it's there?
WHURLEY:  So they'll absolutely use it and I'll
tell you how because quantum computers
could be better things like Grover's
algorithm and search at things like
search, Google will have quantum
computers to improve searches and search
results and and and deal with data and
so if you're a user of Google then you
will indirectly be using those quantum
computers right and that's just one
example. You may get customized drugs in
the future probably the product of some
you know future quantum computing
technology.  So yeah I do think it will
touch consumers en masse, and affect all
of our lives which is yet another reason
to be kind of fascinated with it and to
be interested in it.  MARK:  OK,    I'm
gonna challenge you here now.  I've read
recently and Bo Ewald of D-Wave
confirmed this to me in a podcast I did
earlier this week, that we don't really
know everything yet that quantum
computing will be able to do.  So you're
an imaginative guy, is there anything you
can imagine it doing now or in the next
several years that nobody's talking
about right now.  WHURLEY:  So so first of all I
want to start by saying Bo is one of
my best quantum buddies and I love that
guy, and has been tremendously helpful in
my quantum journey.  He's a super super
cool dude and he's absolutely right
we don't know.  And the answer is... no!  In
fact the whole purpose of starting
Strangworks was the whole purpose of what
I'm doing is not to know.  I don't want to
be the hero that comes up with the solution
of cquantum compting with the killer app.
I  want to build the tools that
empower in 10 years, a hundred years, a
thousand, one hundred thousand
a million people out there who will be
at the intersections of these really
cool big problems.  And this technology, if
we can democratize it and can lower the
barrier to entry then, they'll will
produce these these things that you're
asking about.   MARK: You were giving out a book
today that kind of fascinated me because
one of my blogs a few years ago I
reviewed a book called "How to Teach
Quantum Mechanics to Your Dog." [both laugh]  It was
pretty interesting
and it was kind of simplified;  but this
kind of went went beyond that.  This was
Quantum Computing for Babies.  Tell us a
little bit how that how that came about.
and how you how did you develop it and
what the what the value of the book is.
WHURLEY: So that's a great story that I've told a
lot, and I wish I was getting tired of
telling this story but I'm not it
because what happened was a friend of
mine posted Chris Ferries series of
books on my website you know my facebook
and said should get these for my son
Julian and I got on and Julian was
reading him and he was looking really
cool like he was like reading quantum
optics for babies and he was like
flipping through it like very intently
as I took a photo of him and I ended up
mailing it to Chris Perry who's the
author of this series.  And then over the
course of time to keep a long story
short Chris and I kind of became friends
started talking about working on some
books together, and we said we should do
quantum convening for babies.  So fast
forward we now got a book contract we've
now got a you know this spreadsheet that
he uses to put together the books ,and
I'm like,  you know, pour a rum and coke in
the kitchen tell my wife leave me alone
for a couple hours
I gotta go knock out this kid's book and
now fast forward nine weeks later, oh my
god, this kids book! You know, you're
talking to editors, and what you know entanglement
has so many letters in it.  And
you know this page looks great but we
really like to keep it at three to five
words per page.  And so trying to boil
quantum computing down and that simple
of thing was one of the hardest things
I've ever done
and actually has been a huge learning
exercise for me on my quantum computing
journey.  MARK:  That's that's a great story. Are
there are any are there any questions
that me or anyone else out there should
be asking about quantum computing and
Aren't?
WHURLEY: You know I think it people are asking
questions
maybe they're asking their focus on the
wrong questions.  Things like oh it's
gonna break encryption how's it gonna
break encryption?  How's it gonna break
Bitcoin or blockchain or whatever?  I
don't think these are the right
questions. I think you make the key link
longer and I have even more qubits and I
think you could probably easy you're far
easier for you to make your key link
longer than it is for me to go from 72
qubits to two hundred qubits right and
security is a journey not a destination.
So I think there's a lot of questions
being asked about that.  The questions I
think they aren't asking is um how do I
interface?  How do I interact?  How do I
learn more about this technology whether
they're from a consumer standpoint
whether they're developer but especially
developers or CIOs? I do not travel
around the world and see enough CIOs
thinking about quantum computing and so
let's give you a scenario okay forget
the encryption doomsday scenario
realistic real world scenario alright.
You're in finance.  Your CIO of some big
bank.  Remember Michael Lewis's book Flash
Boys and how high-frequency trading back
in the day was this strategic advantage?
And for a while you know people were
heading off trades at the pass making
all this money etc.,etc.  I  think
quantum will do that to finance industry.
So if you're in finance I think  you would definitely think about it.  Now why aren't people
asking these questions?  Why aren't they
thinking about it?  That's the real
question, and let me explain.  If you are a
CIO and you Google, you see D-wave has 2048
qubits, and then you see IBM celebrating
50 cubits and, wait,  I don't understand
it. And then you see a report by D-Wave
 that there so much faste,r and you
see some you know Scott Aaronson or Alan
Katzgraber or one of these guys right
a thing that says actually we did the
math and we can do almost the same on a
classical computer. That's confusing and
so you know what I've recently done is I
joined I mean I've been at IEEE
member for a while but I joined an
effort and started the quantum computing
standards workgroup to first do
nomenclature standards so that people
like you and I and the CIOs can get an
idea of okay this is what these terms
mean and now I can come
and then to move into benchmarking
standards so that you can have an
objective third-party way we could say
okay quantum computer is not a million times
faster but it is a hundred thousand
times faster.  Or maybe it's a hundred
thousand times faster but it cost two
million times as much so you know we
don't want to use it,  right?  But the
questions you know do you know again to
summarize your question, don't think
enough CIOs I don't think enough people
in technology and the business of
technology are asking any questions let
alone the right questions about
something that is going to not you know
in my presentation a we showed this
slide where it was like patents are
going they're really low like a trend
line at the bottom of a graph, and all of
a sudden, spike!  And we showed investments
trend line and, spike!  And we see this
spike across patents, across  
innovation labs, across universities who
have programs, etc., etc. You start
realizing like hey maybe this thing is
taking off and what's gonna happen is
Quantum's not gonna be something 20
years out.  Quantum is gonna start
affecting people three to five years out
in my opinion and it's gonna start
affecting people in a way that happens
seemingly overnight.  It's gonna be like,
oh I'm in finance and some hedge fund
has a quantum thing and they've been
doing all this crazy stuff and I just
found out about it I better get on that
bandwagon, but with this because of the
environmental stuff because of the
complexity because the developer it
takes me way longer to catch up.  So you
after wayne gretzky this thing you need
to be playing where the puck is at not
you know where it's going not where it's
at or else you're going to be in a lot
of trouble.  MARK:  So the this podcast is first
and foremost about the future now you
talked about where we're going to be in
50 years that's a little long term for
me at my stage of life. I want to know--
WHURLEY: That's not true didn't you recently interview Aubrey de Grey?
MARK: Well I did but just in case just
in case that doesn't come tell me tell
me but I think also 50 years out is
pretty hard to call.  You're on top of it
what do you think I'm going to see in
the next ten years?  WHURLEY: In the next ten years
I think you'll see the kind of the Holy
Grail right now which is a
general-purpose quantum computer that
mean that means a quantum computer that
works far more resiliently than ones  
today. That works in a probably circuit
gate model which works more like you
think of a computer how it works today.
That is
the foundation on which I think a world
of new technologies and discoveries will
be based. MARK:That's outstanding.   Thank you so
much for your time.  WHURLEY: Thanks for
having me.  MARK: Much appreciated.
As whirley mentioned, he's heading IEEE's working group on quantum computing.
With that combination the possibilities are indeed endless.
Many thanks to Interprose and IEEE
for making this interview possible and
thank you for joining me.  Until next time
I'm Mark Sackler
[closing them fade out]
 
 
