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In 2006, the British mathematician Clive Humby famously proclaimed that data is the new oil.Little did he know it would also become the new art.

As one of the foremost practitioners of what he calls data painting, the Turkish American artist and TED Fellow Refik Anadol has been using data as the substance of his work for the better part of a decade. Over that time, hes won awardslike Lumen Prize and been featured at Venice Architecture Biennale and in shows at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

I have always been interested in painting with data, Anadol told Artnet News from Barcelona last weekend, where he was on site to create a new digital artwork for the facade of Antoni Gauds iconic Casa Batll. Thousands of onlookers crowded the outside square towatch the illumination in an event organized by theOFFF Festival. The work was already traded as an NFT through Christies last week, when it sold for$1.38 million(and came with a dinner for 10).

Refik Anadol, Living Architecture: Casa Batll, courtesy of RAS

For me, NFTs and digital art should be experiential. Landmarks have become my canvas, Anadol said. Im interested in exploring the architectural domain as deeply as I can. All my art works tend to have a physical connection to public space.

Using AI to regeneratively map iconic public buildings, Anadol works in equal parts architecture, graphic design, and computer science using a JavaScript object-based coding language called VVVV, which allows for live programming and projection mapping.

It was at UCLA that I learned about creative coding, he says, referring to his time in the schools media arts program. There, his advisors includedChristian Moeller, Casey Reas, and Jennifer Steinkamp.

In 2014, after graduating, he established the Refik Anadol Studio,which currently has a staff of 15 people. Our staff is multicultural and multilingual, Anadol said. We have an incredible staff of different minds and competencies.

Early in his career, Anadol focused on finding support from fellow technologists, rather than in the art world. Back when I first opened the studio in 2014, our earliest collaborators were not from the art or design worlds. They came from tech, he said.

In Quantum Memories, made when he was Googles artist-in-residence, he used the search giants publicly available quantum computing algorithms to 3D map the possibility of a parallel world. Part sci-fi, part next-level computer graphics, thealgorithm processed approximately 200 million images of nature to form an interactive algorithmic gesamtkunstwerk, mimicking the real-time simulations of audiences movements into an entangled web of generative world-building.

Refik Anadol, Quantum Memories, 10M x 10M x 2.5M AI Data Sculpture.Courtesy RAS

In another piece, Melting Memories (2018), inspired by his uncles Alzheimers diagnosis, Anadol transformed brain scans into projected images for the walls of the Pilevneli Gallery in Istanbul.The artwork and others also drew on Anadols longstanding interest in the imagery and history of space exploration.

To date,various iterations of the NFT have been auctioned via Nifty Gateway and Sothebys, with total sales of the project now exceeding $13 million USD, according to CryptoArt.io.Im extremely grateful to the NFT community for supporting my work, he said. The NFT world has given my studio economic independence.

(Asked what he has done with his wealth,Anadol says that whatever he doesnt reinvest into his studio goes to charity. OneNFT from a collection titled An Important Memory for Humanityraised $1.5 million for St Jude Childrens Hospital.)

Seoul Light, DDP, Seoul, KR, Courtesy RAS

In my art practice, I often ask myself the question: how would a computer collaborate with us to make art that not only is futuristic, but also about the possibility of various futures? he said. I do think that we approach answering this question only when we combine research efforts in various fields, including neuroscience, architecture, quantum computing, material science, philosophy, and arts.

Anadol is now busily preparing for two new works: one for an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi that reimagines Italian Renaissance artworks; the other, a new piece to be shown in Istanbul and based on the writings of the13th-century Persian poet Rumi.For the latter work, Anadol will construct a digital installation in the foyer of the recently redesigned AKM Theater in Taksim Square.

All of us are standing on the shoulders of giants, Anadol said. Im just trying to explore the language of humanity.

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Digital Art Star Refik Anadols First Supporters Were in the Tech World. All of a Sudden, His Work Has Become White-Hot at Auction, Too - artnet News

Neutral atom quantum computers promise solutions to many of the problems that beset todays devices, but the technology is still nascent. Recent breakthroughs in the ability to control and program these devices suggest they may be nearing prime time.

The most well-developed quantum technology today relies on superconducting qubits, which power both IBM and Googles processors. But while these devices have been used to demonstrate quantum supremacy and build the largest universal quantum computer to date, they have some limitations.

For a start, they need to be chilled close to absolute zero, which requires bulky and expensive cryogenic equipment. Their quantum states are also very fragile, typically lasting only microseconds, and they are only able to directly interact with their nearest neighbors, which limits the complexity of the circuits they can implement.

Neutral-atom quantum computers sidestep these problems. They are built from an array of individual atoms that are chilled to ultra-low temperatures by firing lasers at them. The rest of the device doesnt need cooling and the individual atoms can be arranged just micrometers apart, making the entire system incredibly compact.

Quantum information is encoded into low-energy atomic states that are very stable, so these qubits are much more long-lived than superconducting ones. This stability also makes it hard to get the qubits to interact, which makes it harder to create entanglements, which are central to most quantum algorithms. But these neutral atoms can be put into a highly excited state, called a Rydberg state, by firing laser pulses at it, which can be used to entangle them with each other.

Despite these promising characteristics, the technology has so far primarily been used for quantum simulators that help understand quantum processes but arent able to implement quantum algorithms. Now though, two studies in Nature, led by researchers from quantum computing companies QuEra and ColdQuanta, have shown that the technology can be used to implement multi-qubit circuits.

The two groups tackle the problem in slightly different ways. The QuEra team take a novel approach to connectivity in their device by using tightly-focused laser beams, known as optical tweezers, to physically move their qubits around. This enables them to easily entangle them with distant qubits rather than being limited to just those closest by. The ColdQuanta team, on the other hand, entangled its qubits by simultaneously exciting two of them into a Rydberg state.

Both groups were able to implement complex multi-qubit circuits. And as Hannah Williams from Durham University in the UK notes in an accompanying commentary, the two approaches are complementary.

Physically shuffling the qubits around means there are long gaps between operations, but the flexible connectivity makes it possible to create much more complex circuits. The ColdQuanta approach, however, is much faster and can run multiple operations in parallel. A combination of the techniques presented by these two groups would lead to a robust and versatile platform for quantum computing, Williams writes.

A host of improvements are required before that happens, though, according to Williams, from better gate fidelities (how consistently you are able to set up the correct operation) to optimized laser beam shapes and more powerful lasers.

Both companies seem to be confident that this wont take long, though. QuEra already unveiled a 256-atom quantum simulator last year and, according to their website, a 64-qubit quantum computer is coming soon. ColdQuanta is more specific, with a promise that its 100-qubit Hilbert computer will be available this year.

How quickly neutral atoms can catch up with industry-leading technologies like superconducting qubits and trapped ions remains to be seen, but it looks like a promising new contender has entered the quantum race.

Image Credit: Shahadat Rahman onUnsplash

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Neutral Atom Quantum Computers Edge Closer to Reality With Two New Breakthroughs - Singularity Hub

Theres a major controversy raging in the field of quantum computing. One side consists of experts and researchers who are skeptical of quantum computers ability to be beneficial in the foreseeable future, simply because the physical and technological challenges are too great. On the other side, if you ask the entrepreneurs and investors at firms banking on quantum computing, that hasnt been the issue for quite some time. From their standpoint, its only a matter of time and concerted effort until the major breakthrough and the real revolution in the field is achieved. And theyre prepared to gamble a lot of money on that.

For decades, most of the quantum research and development has been carried out by academic institutions and government research institutes, but in recent years, steps to make the transition from the academic lab to the industrial sector have increased. Researchers and scientists have been creating or joining companies developing quantum computing technology, and startups in the field have been cropping up at a dizzying pace. In 2021, $3.2 billion was invested in quantum firms around the world, according to The Quantum Insider compared to $900 million in 2020.

And in the first quarter of this year, about $700 million was invested a sum similar to the investments in the field between 2015 and 2019 combined. In addition to the surge in startup activity in the field, tech giants such as IBM, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have been investing major resources in the field and have been recruiting experts as well.

The quantum computing field was academic for a long time, and everything changed the moment that big money reached industry, said Ayal Itzkovitz, managing partner at the Pitango First fund, which has invested in several quantum companies in recent years. Everything is moving forward more quickly. If three years ago, we didnt know if it was altogether possible to build such a computer, now we already know that there will be quantum computers that will be able to do something different from classic computers.

Quantum computers, which are based on the principles of quantum theory, are aimed at providing vastly greater computing power than regular computers, with the capability to carry out a huge number of computations simultaneously. Theoretically it should take them seconds, minutes or hours to do what it would take todays regular supercomputers thousands of years to perform.

Quantum computers are based not on bits, but on qubits produced by a quantum processing unit, which is not limited to the binary of 0 or 1 but is a combination of the two. The idea is that a workable quantum computer, if and when there is such a thing, wont be suitable for use for any task but instead for a set of specific problems that require simultaneous computing, such as simulations, for example. It would be relevant for fields such as chemistry, pharmaceuticals, finance, energy and encoding among others.

It's still all theoretical, and there has yet to be a working quantum computer produced that is capable of performing a task more effectively than a regular computer but that doesnt bother those engaged in the arms race to develop a breakthrough quantum processor.

A million-qubit computer

IBM, which is one of the pioneers in the industry, recently unveiled a particularly large 127-qubit computer, and its promising to produce a 1,000-qubit one within the next few years. In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy with a computer that managed in 3.5 minutes to perform a task that would have taken a regular computer 10,000 years to carry out. And in May of last year, it unveiled a new quantum center in Santa Barbara, California and it intends to build a million-qubit computer by 2029 at an investment of billions of dollars.

Amazon has gotten into the field, recruiting researchers and recently launching a new quantum center at the California Institute of Technology, and Intel and Microsoft have also gotten into the game. In addition to their own internal development efforts, Amazon, Microsoft and Google have been offering researchers access to active quantum computers via their cloud computing services.

At the same time, there are several firms in the market that specialize in quantum computing that have already raised considerable sums or have even gone public. One of the most prominent of them is the American company IonQ (which in the past attracted investments from Google, Amazon and Samsung) and which last year went public via a SPAC merger. Another such company is the Silicon Valley firm Rigetti Computing, which also went public via a SPAC merger. Then theres Quantinuum, which was the product of a merger between Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum.

All thats in addition to a growing startup ecosystem of smaller companies such as Atom Computing and QuEra, which have raised initial funding to develop their own versions of a quantum processor.

In Israel in recent months, the countrys first two startups trying to create a quantum processor have been established. Theyre still in their stealth stage. One is Rehovot-based Quantum Source, which has raised $15 million to develop photonic quantum computing solutions. Its technology is based on research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and its headed by leading people in the Israeli processor chip sector. The second is Quantum Art, whose executives came from the Israeli defense sector. Its technology is also based on work at the Weizmann Institute.

There are also other early-stage enterprises that are seeking to develop a quantum processor, including one created by former Intel employees and another by former defense company people. Then there is LightSolver, which is seeking to develop a laser technology computer, which is not quantum technology, but it seeks to provide similar performance.

Going for broke

But all of these are at their early stages from a technological standpoint, and the prominent companies overseas have or are building active but small quantum computers usually of dozens of qubits that are only for R&D use to demonstrate their capabilities but without actual practical application. Thats out of a sense that developing an effective quantum computer that has a real advantage requires millions of qubits. Thats a major disparity that will be difficult to bridge from a technological standpoint.

The problem is that sometimes investing in the here-and-now comes at the expense of investments in the future. The quantum companies are still relatively small and have limited staff. If they have an active computer, they also need to maintain it and support its users in the community and among researchers. That requires major efforts and a lot of money, which might be at the expense of next-generation research and it is already delaying the work of a large number of quantum computer manufacturers who are seeing how smaller startups focusing only on next-generation development are getting ahead of them.

As a result, there are also companies with an entirely different approach, which seeks to skip over the current generation of quantum computers and go for broke to build an effective computer with millions of qubits capable of error detection and correction even if it takes many years.

In 2016, it was on that basis that the Palo Alto, California firm PsiQuantum was founded. Last year the company raised $450 million (in part from Microsoft and BlackRock) based on a company valuation of $3 billion, becoming one of the hot and promising names in the field.

Itzkovitz, from the Pitango fund, was one of its early investors. They said they wouldnt make a small computer with a few qubits because it would delay them but would instead go straight for the real goal, he explained.

PsiQuantum is gambling on a fundamentally different paradigm: Most of the companies building an active computer, including the tech giants, have chosen technology based on specifical material matters (for example superconductors or trapped ions). In contrast, PsiQuantum is building a photonic quantum computer, based on light and optics an approach that until recently was considered physically impossible.

Itzkovitz said that he has encountered a large number of startups that are building quantum processors despite the technological risk and the huge difficulty involved. In the past two weeks, I have spoken with 12 or 13 companies making qubits from England, Holland, Finland, the United States and Canada as if this were the most popular thing there was now in the high-tech industry around the world, he said.

As a result, there are also venture capital funds in Israel and overseas that in the past had not entered the field but that are now looking for such companies to invest in over concern not to be left out of the race, as well as a desire to be exposed to the quantum field.

Its the Holy Grail

Similar to the regular computing industry, in quantum computing, its also not enough to build a processor. A quantum processor is a highly complex system that requires a collection of additional hardware components, as well as software and supporting algorithms, of course all of which are designed to permit its core to function efficiently and to take advantage of the ability and potential of qubits in the real world. Therefore, at the same time that quantum processor manufacturers have been at work, in recent years there has been a growing industry of startups seeking to provide them and clients with layers of hardware and software in the tower that stands on the shoulders of the quantum computers processor.

A good example of that is the Israeli firm Quantum Machines, which was established in 2018 and has so far raised $75 million. It has developed a monitoring and control system for quantum computers consisting of hardware and software. According to the company, the system constitutes the brain of the quantum processor and enables it to perform computing activity well and to fulfill its potential. There are also other companies in the market supplying such components and other components including even the refrigerators necessary to build the computers.

Some companies develop software and algorithms in the hope that they will be needed to effectively operate the computers. One of them is Qedma Quantum Computing from Israel, which has developed what it describes as an operating system for quantum computers that is designed to reduce errors and increase quantum computers reliability.

Our goal is to provide hardware manufacturers with the tools that will enable them to do something efficient with the quantum computers and to help create a world in which quantum algorithmic advantages can actually be realized, said Asif Sinay, the companys founder-partner and CEO. Its the Holy Grail of all of the quantum companies in the world.

The big challenge facing these companies is proving that their technology is genuine and that it provides real value to companies developing quantum processors. Thats of course in addition to providing a solution that is sufficiently unique that the tech giants wont be able to develop it on their own.

The big companies dont throw money around just like that, Sinay said. They want to create cooperation with companies that help them reach their goal and to improve the quality of the quantum computer. Unlike the cyber field, for example, you cant come and scare a customer into buying your product. Here youre sitting with people at your level, really smart [people] who understand that you need to give them value that assists in the companys performance and to take the computer to a higher level.

Two concurrent arms races

What the companies mentioned so far have in common is that they are building technology designed to create an efficient quantum computer, whether its a processor or the technology surrounding it. At the same time, another type of companies is gaining steam those that develop the tools to develop quantum software that in the future will make it possible for developers and firms to build applications for the quantum computer.

Classiq is an Israeli company that has developed tools that make it easier for programmers to write software for quantum computers. It raised $33 million at the beginning of the year and has raised $48 million all told. A competitor in Singapore, Horizon Quantum Computing, which just days ago announced that it raised $12 million, is offering a similar solution.

Another prominent player is the U.S. firm Zapata, in which Israels Pitago fund has also invested, and which is engaged in services involved in building quantum applications for corporations.

There are two concurrent arms races happening now, says Nir Minerbi, co founder and CEO of Classiq. One is to build the worlds first fully functional quantum computer. And many startups and tech giants are working on that and that market is now peaking. The second race is the one for creating applications and software that runs on quantum and can serve these firms. This is a field that is now only making its first steps - and its hard to know when it will reach its goal.

More:
The big money is here: The arms race to quantum computing - Haaretz

Nature allows the storage and manipulation of data in new and powerful ways using quantum mechanics, and physicists are harnessing the exponential power of this technology by developing quantum computers using superconductors.

In the Spring 2022 Hans Bethe Lecture, physicist John Martinis will explain the basic concepts behind quantum computing, show recent data from a quantum supremacy experiment and explain future uses of quantum algorithms.

Martinis talk, Building a Quantum Computer, is April 27, 7:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall.

Quantum computation is already proving to be a useful tool in basic science and is making rapid progress toward broad applications, said Dan Ralph, the F.R. Newman Professor of Physics and chair of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Martinis is a central pioneer in this field, and a wonderful lecturer about where the field stands and where it is going.

Martinis is the Worster Chair in experimental physics at University of California, Santa Barbara, and has worked in high levels of industry with the aim of building the first quantum computers.

Martinis did pioneering experiments in superconducting qubits (quantum bits) in the mid-1980s for his Ph.D. thesis at the University of California, Berkley. He has studied low-temperature-device physics, focusing on quantum computation since the late 1990s. He was awarded the London Prize in low-temperature physics in 2014 for his work in this field.

From 2014-20, he worked at Google to build a useful quantum computer, culminating in a quantum supremacy experiment in 2019.He was awarded the John Stewart Bell prize in 2021.

As a part of the Hans Bethe Lecture series, Martinis will give a physics colloquium, Quantum Error Correction for Mortals, on April 25 at 4 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall, and an Applied and Engineering Physics/Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics seminar, My Trek from Fundamental to Industrial Research: Quantum Systems Engineering, on April 26 at 4 p.m. in 700 Clark Hall.

The Hans Bethe Lecture series, established by the Department of Physics and the College of Arts and Sciences, honors Bethe, Cornell professor of physics from 1936 until his death in 2005. Bethe won the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics for his description of the nuclear processes that power the sun.

Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Quantum computing pioneer to share insights in Bethe lectures | Cornell Chronicle - Cornell Chronicle

It is true that adversaries are collecting our encrypted data today so they can decrypt it later. In essence anything sent using PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) today may very well be decrypted when quantum computing becomes available. Our recent report identifies the risk to account numbers and other long tail data (data that still has high value 5 years or more into the future). Data you send today using traditional PKI is the horse that left the barn.

But this article describes a scary scenario where an adversarys quantum computer hacks the US militarys communications and utilizes that advantage to sink the US Fleet but that is highly unlikely as long as government agencies follow orders. The US government specifies that AES-128 be used for secret (unclassified) information and AES-256 for top secret (classified) information. While AES-128 can be cracked using quantum computers, one estimate suggests that would take 6 months of computing time. That would be very expensive. Most estimates indicate that using AES-256 would take hundreds of years, but the military is already planning an even safer alternative it just isnt yet in production (that I am aware of):

Arthur Herman conducted two formidable studies on what a single, successful quantum computing attack would do to both our banking systems and a major cryptocurrency. A single attack on the banking system by a quantum computer would take down Fedwire and cause $2 trillion of damage in a very short period of time. A similar attack on a cryptocurrency like bitcoin would cause a 90 percent drop in price and would start a three-year recession in the United States. Both studies were backed up by econometric models using over 18,000 data points to predict these cascading failures.

Another disastrous effect could be that an attacker with a CRQC could take control of any systems that rely on standard PKI. So, by hacking communications, they would be able to disrupt data flows so that the attacker could take control of a device, crashing it into the ground or even using it against an enemy. Think of the number of autonomous vehicles that we are using both from a civilian and military standpoint. Any autonomous devices such as passenger cars, military drones, ships, planes, and robots could be hacked by a CRQC and shut down or controlled to perform activities not originally intended by the current users or owners.

Overview byTim Sloane,VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group

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Quantum Isnt Armageddon; But Your Horse Has Already Left the Barn - PaymentsJournal