After a difficult trading week, Google (GOOGL) stock rose today on news of a major development. The tech conglomerate has been working hard on multiple artificial intelligence (AI) innovations, including a recent breakthrough in weather forecasting technology through a new AI model.
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But today, the head of one of Google’s divisions published a detailed report on a key project his team has been working on.
This report is on a new chip that has been trending since Google’s announcement. Any time a leading tech company announces a new chip, it’s natural to wonder if the next big AI breakthrough is upon us. While it’s true that Google’s latest innovation will likely significantly impact AI development, it actually comes from a different division.
In fact, the man behind it is actually a computer scientist who left the field of AI to focus on another area of tech.
What is quantum computing
Who is the author of Google’s new report that is pushing up share prices? Hartmut Neven is the founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, a research division focused on revolutionizing modern computing. In the report, Neven laid out how his team has achieved a major step towards that with the release of Willow, described as a state-of-the-art quantum computing chip.
The term "quantum computing" has been trending fairly often lately as companies in the space report progress and receive praise from Wall Street analysts. While a standard computer does things one step at a time, quantum computing systems can complete multiple simultaneous steps, solving problems much faster.
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These systems utilize quantum bits (qubits) of information to solve complex problems at significantly higher speeds than traditional computers, doing so by leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics.
Fellow tech conglomerate Honeywell Industries has praised quantum computing technology as having the power to transform many industries, and Google may be about to do just that. In the report, Neven highlights that Willow will enable two important achievements.
Google's new chip solves a problem
First, it can significantly reduce errors, which "cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction."
Second, the chip completed a “standard benchmark computation” in under five minutes, which Neven claims would take more than ten years for the fastest supercomputers available today to achieve.
Neven has worked in both AI and quantum computing. While he believes that both are destined to become “the most transformational technologies of our time,” he stresses that advanced AI systems stand to benefit significantly from the quantum computing revolution.
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“Quantum computation will be indispensable for collecting training data that’s inaccessible to classical machines,” he states, referring to the computers that most AI models are currently being trained on.
He sees this benefiting many areas of tech, helping engineers create new batteries for electric vehicles, for example, and other new alternative energy solutions.
Neven also believes it can help scientists create new medicines. As he sees it, there are game-changing future applications that can’t run on classic computers but are “waiting to be unlocked with quantum computing.”
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Two transformation technologies, one company
Google is considered a leader in many areas of technology that go far beyond digital searching, including AI development and big data analytics.
Quantum computing may not be the first facet of the tech sector that comes to mind when we think of Google. However, as Neven’s report makes clear, the company may be on the threshold of unlocking the newest phase of tech. If Willow has the power to help revolutionize computing, as Neven claims it does, Google Quantum AI could help usher in breakthroughs for AI through its extensive computing capabilities.
It still isn’t clear just how far AI can take us, and few people are likely to understand the power of quantum computing. But Neven’s team at Google Quantum AI is comprised of people who do, and they may have engineered a breakthrough, the magnitude of which we haven’t seen since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
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If Willow is the important tech innovation that it seems to be, Google will be well-positioned to benefit as it helps revolutionize multiple industries.
Google stock only rose slightly today on this news. But if the company’s quantum computing innovations prove to have the transformational abilities that Neven touts, they will likely be a strong growth-driving catalyst in the future as this new technology begins to take shape and markets adjust to the evolutions of quantum computing, specifically how it will impact the rise of AI.
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