The power of quantum computers makes them impossible to ignore, and attractive to invest in. Gov. Kristi Noem recently mentioned them in her budget address.
Dakota State University President Jose-Marie Griffiths compared the technological jump to horsepower in a car engine.
“Probably the fastest racecar you could have, to a beaten up old pickup truck," Griffiths said. "I mean, it’s just going to change the world. The one thing I do have to say is we aren’t all going to have quantum computers on our desks. Quantum computing has such power, it will be reserved for those really major problems that can’t be solved right now.”
Classical computers, think your laptop, smartphone, or calculator, use technologies based on the transistor. Transistors operate on binary code like an electrical gate that uses a one or a zero, an on or an off.
Griffiths explained how quantum computing operates in a new dimension.
“This is at the subatomic level, so at the level of an electron or photon, the two prominent ones," Griffiths said. "The interesting thing about the subatomic level is that they can have multiple states at the same time. They can be coded as a 1, 0, a 1-0, or a 0-1, all at the same time.”
That translates to enough computing power to start moving artificial intelligence out of the realm of sci-fi and into reality, or even expose the weakness of current encryption practices.
“The data that is protected by encryption can have the potential to be broken into really easily by these quantum algorithms," Griffiths said. "So, the first thing DSU in particular is going to be interested in is how do we protect data and systems from being hacked by people who happen to have access to quantum capability.”
Griffiths said that includes applications that maintain personal information like healthcare and financial services, two key pillars of South Dakota’s economy.