By: Enoch Wang, RIG Intern Researcher



The advent of the quantum age is here. We live on the forefront of an era where daily new discoveries are made using the unique properties that Einstein himself could not explain. Ever since the results of the 1999 Eraser Experiment conducted by Marlan O.Scully [1], physicists and computer engineers alike have strived towards creating a new system of logic by which we can build the foundation of Quantum computers upon. The Two Slit experiment of 1801 taught us that light behaves as a wave prior to having its superposition state realized. The Eraser experiment leverages entangled particles to test whether this effect ever changes even after information about the state is destroyed.

               Two Slit Experiment 1801                      Eraser experiment 1999                     

With these two great discoveries, engineers have developed several Quantum gates capable of computing prime values several magnitudes faster than conventional binary computing, the Hadamard gate, Deutsch gate, Toffoli gate, CNOT, P-gate, U-gate, to name a few [2].  Unfortunately, the Hadamard and CNOT gates are perfect examples that much of the new design inherits the old with clear inspiration from classical binary computing. Nevertheless, these advances in technology have effectively leveraged the entanglement and superposition properties of Quantum to increase how we preform prime calculations, searches, decision algorithms, and analysis; supporting computational tasks used to design and create AI.

Pauli Gate Truth Table                                         Hadamard Gate Truth Table

The reality is that AI will not be the greatest benefactor of the quantum age. Many of the calculations benefit cryptography more so than they do AI algorithms. Neural networks, random forest, k-nearest neighbors, and support vector machines gain little from the introduction of quantum gates. Overall computing power may inadvertently become more available as less computing power will be dedicated to other resources such as crypto mining. The real winner of the quantum age is security. Security in the form of quantum key distributions (QKD) and quantum safe encryption algorithms are proven through mathematics. Almost all the current quantum gates are direct translations from conventional computing which shows that humanity has yet to reach the paradigm shift necessa

ry to think four dimensionally. There is hope as our current understanding of how to effectively apply quantum properties to computers is still in its infancy – but developing. Today, newer more inventive engineers enter the field of quantum mechanics designing and developing more innovative  gates unrestricted by outdated binary thinking.

In the world of AI, complex real time systems requiring split second decision making will need to process meta-data and draw connections faster than modern computers are currently capable of. Many of the operations used to design AI do not see much performance gain from Quantum Logic Gates [2]; however, increased computational availability and new algorithms will undoubtedly allow us to push the AI industry in terms of applicability.  Dynamic systems handling multiple AI agents such as RIG’s very own NIMBUS system may need to look towards quantum computers to keep up with data streams processing terabytes of data every second. We are not far from a future where real-time systems handled by AI will be an integral part of everyday life and advanced technologies such as Quantum logic gates may be what powers it all.





[1]       Scully, Marlan O., and Kai Drühl. “Quantum eraser: A proposed photon correlation experiment concerning observation and” delayed choice” in quantum mechanics.” Physical Review A 25.4 (1982): 2208.

[2]       Ying, Mingsheng. “Quantum computation, quantum theory and AI.” Artificial Intelligence 174.2 (2010): 162-176.