[00:00:01.02]
[dark ambient music]

[00:01:05.01]
[discussion in German]

[00:01:07.04]
- [Interviewer] Nein,
nein, nein, nein, nein.

[00:01:08.09]
- Can I gesture a little bit?

[00:01:10.03]
Will you be able to get the gestures in?

[00:01:12.04]
- [Cameraman] No.
- [Interviewer] Not really.

[00:01:13.05]
- [Cameraman] I would see them, but...

[00:01:15.08]
- But I'd like to gesture a little.

[00:01:17.01]
- Of course.

[00:01:18.09]
- [Cameraman] If you come
half a step in front, yeah.

[00:01:21.01]
That's it.

[00:01:23.02]
Okay, rolling.

[00:01:25.01]
- [Interviewer] James, why is it,

[00:01:26.03]
do we have any explanation for it,

[00:01:28.01]
that there are so many streets,

[00:01:30.07]
places named after a socialist, communist

[00:01:34.09]
in the eastern part of Berlin?

[00:01:36.07]
- Well, every regime wants

[00:01:38.05]
to stamp its identity
on the urban landscape,

[00:01:42.04]
particularly one that's...

[00:01:43.02]
My quantum journey began with
a street fight in Berlin.

[00:01:46.02]
I had come to the
American Academy in Berlin

[00:01:49.02]
to write a book about the
making of "Human Terrain,"

[00:01:51.09]
a documentary film about
the US military's effort

[00:01:55.03]
to enlist American
academics in the front lines

[00:01:58.03]
of the counterinsurgency
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[00:02:02.06]
It was not meant to be.

[00:02:04.08]
Before I had even unpacked my bags,

[00:02:07.00]
I was asked to write an opinion piece

[00:02:09.00]
for the "Berliner Zeitung."

[00:02:11.01]
Seeking inspiration and some
relief from the jet lag,

[00:02:14.02]
I took a long ramble through the city.

[00:02:16.05]
Every other street seemed to bear the name

[00:02:18.06]
of a famous philosopher,
general, or statesman,

[00:02:22.09]
with more than a few named
after American presidents.

[00:02:25.07]
There was even one for the
radical anarchist of the 1960s,

[00:02:29.04]
Rudi Dutschke.

[00:02:31.08]
By the end of my psycho-geographic drift,

[00:02:34.01]
my head had cleared.

[00:02:36.00]
I had found a topic for the
op-ed: "The Missing President."

[00:02:40.03]
After all, the following week
would be the 50th anniversary

[00:02:43.04]
of President Eisenhower's
farewell address.

[00:02:45.08]
- Good evening, my fellow Americans.

[00:02:48.00]
- [James] The one where he famously warned

[00:02:49.07]
against the unwarranted influence

[00:02:52.00]
of a military industrial complex,

[00:02:54.09]
but also the danger that public
policy could itself become

[00:02:58.03]
the captive of a scientific
technological elite.

[00:03:01.02]
- My special thanks go to them

[00:03:03.01]
for the opportunity of
addressing you this evening.

[00:03:07.04]
- [James] I decided to ask why Berlin,

[00:03:09.02]
the capital of the country

[00:03:10.08]
that he had helped
liberate in World War II,

[00:03:13.01]
had no street named for Ike,
no Eisenhower Strasse.

[00:03:18.01]
Once dropped into the media pool,

[00:03:19.07]
my small and insignificant
op-ed began to spookily interact

[00:03:23.09]
with new waves of information.

[00:03:26.04]
[upbeat electronic music]

[00:03:31.06]
Barely a month later,
I found myself in the back

[00:03:34.04]
of an unmarked van with a
Deutsche Welle television crew,

[00:03:38.01]
speeding around Berlin and
providing on-camera commentary

[00:03:41.09]
as we did drive-by shoots of
streets bearing famous names.

[00:03:45.08]
- [Reporter] And if you're
specifically looking

[00:03:47.01]
for monuments to Ronald Reagan...

[00:03:48.09]
- [James] We ended up
at the Brandenburg Gate

[00:03:50.06]
in front of the US Embassy.

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- [Reporter] American officials feel

[00:03:55.03]
that the year in which
Reagan would've turned 100

[00:03:58.02]
is an apt time for the city to honor him.

[00:04:03.04]
[Speaking in German language]

[00:04:05.03]
- [Interpreter] We'd love to
see any symbol of recognition

[00:04:07.05]
of Ronald Reagan and
his legacy for Berlin.

[00:04:12.07]
I believe the early end

[00:04:13.08]
of the Cold War had
significant implications

[00:04:16.05]
for Berlin and its people.

[00:04:18.06]
- [Reporter] Nancy and Ronald Reagan

[00:04:19.09]
during their famous visit
to West Berlin back in 1987.

[00:04:24.05]
- Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

[00:04:28.03]
[audience cheering]

[00:04:32.03]
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

[00:04:36.04]
[audience cheering]

[00:04:38.05]
- [Reporter] Two years later,
the wall indeed came down.

[00:04:42.07]
Would the Americans be glad

[00:04:44.00]
to see this prominent square
renamed after Ronald Reagan?

[00:04:51.03]
[laughing]

[00:04:55.08]
- [James] The fact that neither Reagan

[00:04:57.03]
or Eisenhower got a street name
was lost in a bigger reveal,

[00:05:01.03]
delivered years later in a speech

[00:05:02.08]
by President Reagan's
own Secretary of State,

[00:05:05.06]
George Shultz.

[00:05:08.09]
- I have a physicist friend
at Stanford named Sid Drell,

[00:05:12.03]
who has given me the concept
of quantum diplomacy.

[00:05:17.06]
An axiom of quantum theory
is that when you observe

[00:05:21.02]
and measure some piece of a system,

[00:05:23.02]
you inevitably disturb the whole system.

[00:05:26.07]
So the process of observation
itself is a cause of change.

[00:05:32.04]
- And behind us, we have...

[00:05:33.06]
That day in Berlin,

[00:05:34.06]
in front of a camera with
Marx and Engels behind me,

[00:05:38.01]
George Shultz's message became the medium.

[00:05:41.01]
War, peace and quantum
mechanics were entangled,

[00:05:44.07]
and my quantum journey began.

[00:05:46.05]
We use language, we use names.

[00:05:49.05]
[Cameraman speaking in German language]

[00:05:50.09]
- [Interviewer] Ah, okay, I
moved into the picture, sorry.

[00:05:54.09]
- Okay.

[00:05:56.01]
- [Interviewer] Could you make
it a little bit more brief?

[00:06:00.07]
[dark ambient music]

[00:06:23.05]
[ragtime jazz music]

[00:06:24.08]
- [James] In 1927, the
world's leading scientists

[00:06:27.04]
gathered in Brussels to
make sense of three decades

[00:06:30.05]
of new discoveries in
physics and chemistry.

[00:06:33.04]
17 of the 29 attending
were or would become

[00:06:36.08]
Nobel Prize laureates,

[00:06:38.03]
including Marie Curie,
the only woman at Solvay,

[00:06:41.05]
but also the only scientist
who received two Nobel Prizes.

[00:06:45.04]
Max Planck was there,

[00:06:46.07]
who coined the concept of quanta in 1900.

[00:06:50.07]
German scientists who had been banned

[00:06:52.07]
from earlier post-war conferences

[00:06:54.09]
were welcomed back at Brussels.

[00:06:56.09]
In a singular display
of interwar solidarity,

[00:07:00.00]
leading scientists from over a
dozen countries were captured

[00:07:03.01]
in an amateur movie taken by
the physicist Irving Langmuir,

[00:07:06.06]
using his own 16 millimeter
Bell and Howell camera.

[00:07:10.01]
We see leaving the conference Niels Bohr

[00:07:12.04]
and Erwin Schrodinger,

[00:07:15.02]
Werner Heisenberg,

[00:07:17.04]
Paul Dirac,

[00:07:19.04]
Max Born,

[00:07:22.03]
Louis de Broglie,

[00:07:25.03]
Wolfgang Pauli,

[00:07:28.07]
and of course Albert Einstein.

[00:07:32.06]
Madame Curie does a little dance.

[00:07:35.07]
Paul Ehrenfest mugs for the camera.

[00:07:39.00]
These remarkable scientists
would intuit, debate

[00:07:42.02]
and eventually be proven
right by experiments

[00:07:45.08]
that the quanta in the form of photons

[00:07:48.05]
and electrons could exist
as both waves and particles

[00:07:51.04]
until observed.

[00:07:53.05]
The position and speed could
not be simultaneously measured.

[00:07:58.07]
They could correlate non-locally
across vast distances.

[00:08:03.00]
They had opposing spins and
could not occupy the same space.

[00:08:08.07]
And that a cat in a
box could be both alive

[00:08:11.07]
and dead at the same time.

[00:08:16.09]
These principles of
complementarity, uncertainty,

[00:08:21.07]
the wave function,
superposition, exclusion,

[00:08:28.02]
and entanglement would
become the foundation

[00:08:32.01]
of a revolutionary new theory of physics,

[00:08:35.07]
quantum mechanics.

[00:08:38.05]
Quantum mechanics would
rock many of the scientific

[00:08:41.01]
as well as philosophical
truths of the 20th century.

[00:08:44.02]
The theory repudiated
much of Newtonian physics

[00:08:46.08]
at the subatomic level.

[00:08:48.08]
It bent classical conceptions
about space and time

[00:08:51.07]
at the cosmological level.

[00:08:54.02]
It cast into doubt assumptions
about causality, prediction,

[00:08:58.07]
and an observer-independent reality

[00:09:00.07]
at the metaphysical level.

[00:09:05.06]
Eventually giving rise to
new disruptive technologies,

[00:09:09.06]
quantum mechanics would
change geopolitics forever.

[00:09:15.04]
The fifth Solvay Conference on
Physics was a high watermark

[00:09:18.09]
of international scientific cooperation.

[00:09:21.08]
However, the amateur film
ends with a premonition

[00:09:24.04]
of a darker future that might lie ahead.

[00:09:27.01]
Like many of the other
principles enshrined

[00:09:29.01]
in the covenant of the League of Nations,

[00:09:31.00]
scientific internationalism
would not survive the rise

[00:09:33.07]
of antisemitism, militarism,
and totalitarianism.

[00:09:39.00]
With Hitler's ascension to power in 1933,

[00:09:41.06]
quantum mechanics became
identified as a Jewish physics.

[00:09:45.07]
Not even Werner Heisenberg,

[00:09:47.03]
who would later head the Nazi
Germany's atomic bomb program,

[00:09:51.03]
would escape accusations
of being a "White Jew"

[00:09:54.07]
for his past affiliation with the ideas

[00:09:56.08]
and creators of quantum mechanics.

[00:10:00.06]
In 1939, the key Solvay scientists,

[00:10:03.03]
many of them now refugees
from European fascism,

[00:10:06.04]
would gather again at Einstein's new home,

[00:10:08.05]
the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton.

[00:10:11.06]
They had come to hash out
their theoretical differences

[00:10:14.01]
about quantum mechanics,

[00:10:16.02]
but powerful forces were
about to be unleashed

[00:10:18.06]
within the atom as well as inside Europe.

[00:10:22.03]
While at the institute,

[00:10:24.01]
the physicists produced
a letter and an article

[00:10:27.01]
that would help change
the course of history.

[00:10:29.04]
The letter from Albert Einstein

[00:10:30.08]
and the Hungarian physicist
Leo Szilard was sent

[00:10:33.08]
to Franklin Roosevelt.

[00:10:35.02]
They warned the president of a new source

[00:10:37.02]
of incredible energy from
the splitting of an atom

[00:10:39.09]
that could well lead to the construction

[00:10:41.09]
of extremely powerful new bombs.

[00:10:45.07]
One month later, Niels Bohr

[00:10:47.07]
and the Princeton physicist
John Wheeler produced an article

[00:10:50.07]
on the mechanism of nuclear fission.

[00:10:52.08]
It was published September 1st,

[00:10:54.09]
the same day Germany invaded Poland

[00:10:57.03]
and the beginning of the Second World War.

[00:11:00.08]
A political chain reaction
followed: the Manhattan Project,

[00:11:04.09]
Los Alamos, and the dropping
of two atomic bombs on Japan.

[00:11:12.02]
Seven years later,

[00:11:13.04]
after the bomb helped
end the Second World War

[00:11:15.07]
and start a Cold War
with the Soviet Union,

[00:11:18.00]
Einstein voiced his regret
for the inability of humankind

[00:11:21.07]
to manage the powerful technology

[00:11:24.00]
he and other physicists
had brought to life.

[00:11:28.05]
[tense piano music]

[00:11:31.05]
Without quantum mechanics,

[00:11:32.08]
there would be no atomic
bomb or nuclear revolution,

[00:11:36.07]
microprocessor or information revolution.

[00:11:41.06]
In the first quantum revolution,

[00:11:43.04]
nuclear weapons helped end a World War

[00:11:46.04]
and dominate a bipolar order.

[00:11:49.01]
In the second revolution,

[00:11:50.03]
information technology
helped network societies,

[00:11:53.09]
hyper-globalize the economy,

[00:11:55.08]
and, sadly, Balkanize global politics.

[00:11:59.04]
Now a third revolution is stirring

[00:12:02.04]
in quantum computing, communication,

[00:12:04.07]
and artificial intelligence,
with the potential

[00:12:07.02]
to transform how wars are
waged and peace is made.

[00:12:11.06]
Instead of a letter or an article,

[00:12:13.05]
we decided to make a film.

[00:12:15.06]
The Solvay Conferences became the model

[00:12:17.07]
for international symposia

[00:12:19.01]
that we would hold annually at Q Station,

[00:12:21.04]
the former quarantine
site of Sydney Harbor.

[00:12:24.00]
We would travel to Copenhagen,
Singapore, Ann Arbor,

[00:12:28.02]
Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New Delhi,

[00:12:31.02]
and other key sites to track
the origins, evolution,

[00:12:34.07]
and potential convergence
of quantum science,

[00:12:37.05]
technology, and geopolitics.

[00:12:39.09]
All in search of answers
to questions raised

[00:12:42.04]
by a third quantum revolution.

[00:12:45.00]
When will it happen?

[00:12:47.01]
What will it mean?

[00:12:49.02]
Who will benefit?

[00:12:54.01]
- There were many of the scientists

[00:12:56.04]
who were involved in the Manhattan Project

[00:12:58.02]
who had second thoughts, in a
sense almost first thoughts.

[00:13:01.05]
The first thought Bohr had

[00:13:02.07]
when he heard about the program

[00:13:04.01]
was not really how to
do it scientifically.

[00:13:07.02]
It was to think about
the political effects

[00:13:08.07]
as the first reaction.

[00:13:10.01]
- Why did Werner
Heisenberg go to Copenhagen

[00:13:12.03]
in September of 1941 in
German-occupied Denmark

[00:13:16.08]
at the height of Germany's
expansion during World War II?

[00:13:19.02]
Why did he go and what did
he and Bohr talk about?

[00:13:23.01]
- People who actually started
quantum mechanics also had

[00:13:25.06]
a hard time understanding
it and explaining it,

[00:13:27.08]
and it is still considered one of the most

[00:13:30.00]
exotic fields of all of science.

[00:13:31.06]
- We can actually test it.

[00:13:33.01]
It's an invitation

[00:13:34.05]
to take a philosophical
question into the lab,

[00:13:37.00]
and how often do you get to
take philosophy into the lab?

[00:13:40.03]
- Measuring devices are big objects,

[00:13:42.07]
and big objects don't obey
the laws of quantum mechanics,

[00:13:46.04]
so they're something different.

[00:13:48.08]
With the advent of the hope of
building a quantum computer,

[00:13:53.08]
we start to realize that bigness

[00:13:55.06]
has nothing to do with that.

[00:13:58.00]
- We speak somehow about
the quantum revolution

[00:14:01.03]
as if it has not already started to occur.

[00:14:03.07]
The fact is, almost everything
around us is powered

[00:14:05.09]
by our mastery of the most basic phenomena

[00:14:09.05]
in quantum mechanics.

[00:14:10.05]
- There is still at least four
strong competing technologies

[00:14:17.02]
to see which one will
be the best technology

[00:14:19.04]
for quantum computing.

[00:14:20.07]
- A time is coming where
we're going to be making use

[00:14:23.04]
of those distinct and different
aspects of the quantum world

[00:14:27.07]
and using those different aspects

[00:14:29.06]
for revolutionary, disruptive things.

[00:14:33.00]
- As a scientist, fundamentally
the most rewarding thing is

[00:14:36.03]
can you control the quantum world?

[00:14:37.09]
So it's really understanding
nature, its fundamental level.

[00:14:40.06]
- What I love about
building a quantum computer

[00:14:44.02]
is all these concepts
become very natural for you.

[00:14:47.07]
- So as a result of
these Bell experiments,

[00:14:49.01]
we have to accept that
nature is not classical.

[00:14:52.03]
We have to accept that our
way of thinking about things

[00:14:55.04]
is actually to some extent wrong.

[00:14:57.02]
- I believe that life is
kind of uniquely poised

[00:15:01.06]
between the quantum and
the classical world.

[00:15:04.08]
- I believe this is an
important contribution

[00:15:10.05]
to the way we think about social sciences

[00:15:14.05]
because it opens maybe different ways

[00:15:17.08]
for looking at reality, how
we are actors in the world,

[00:15:21.04]
and how we may make a change in the world.

[00:15:25.08]
- Consciousness, and by
extension human subjectivity,

[00:15:29.01]
is a macroscopic
quantum-mechanical phenomenon.

[00:15:31.07]
We're basically walking wave functions.

[00:15:33.09]
- I think we're all quantum,

[00:15:35.02]
so in that sense, I would say,

[00:15:37.09]
[laughs] we could say that
we're quantum computers,

[00:15:40.06]
but I don't mean anything
particularly exciting by that, so.

[00:15:45.07]
- I think the best possible
uses of quantum computing

[00:15:48.07]
are going to be applications of

[00:15:51.02]
quantum artificial intelligence.

[00:15:52.09]
- Right, the dream of
control is the reason

[00:15:54.04]
why we want artificial intelligence.

[00:15:55.08]
And the problem there is

[00:15:56.06]
there is a philosophical problem there,

[00:15:58.05]
because if we equate
consciousness with intelligence,

[00:16:01.00]
then it's by definition beyond control.

[00:16:03.09]
So I think it's an impossible dream.

[00:16:06.00]
- I'm sure people will find a way

[00:16:08.07]
to use quantum computers in warfare.

[00:16:12.08]
There is no doubt about it.

[00:16:15.00]
- The more that we speed
up our conflicts as nations

[00:16:19.03]
using artificial intelligence,

[00:16:21.08]
the more we reduce our decision space.

[00:16:24.09]
- When you say quantum internet,

[00:16:26.02]
I just think this is a much
faster, more efficient way

[00:16:29.05]
to gather information
about people's habits.

[00:16:34.01]
- How you put the dial
of your society to say,

[00:16:37.09]
well, things may go wrong, but if they do,

[00:16:41.04]
then is that a problem for the collective

[00:16:44.00]
or is that a problem for the individual?

[00:16:46.03]
That is a profoundly ethical moment.

[00:16:48.08]
- If it is a race,

[00:16:49.06]
it might be a race that
all of humanity wins.

[00:16:51.04]
But also about the rise of China,

[00:16:53.05]
about how we've seen AI and
quantum in China really take off

[00:16:57.02]
for the last few years

[00:16:58.06]
and the challenges that
that poses to our security

[00:17:02.08]
and to our economies.

[00:17:04.02]
- When haven't we mobilized
every kind of human effort

[00:17:08.05]
to refine our techniques for
how to destroy ourselves?

[00:17:12.08]
- Instead of kind of
conceptualizing development

[00:17:16.09]
in this area as mirroring the space race

[00:17:20.07]
or the arms race during the Cold War,

[00:17:23.07]
but instead take this opportunity

[00:17:27.00]
to use science and
technology as a vehicle,

[00:17:30.00]
a driver for international cooperation.

[00:17:33.01]
- You know, the distance between we

[00:17:35.02]
and a god is a quantum computer.

[00:17:38.06]
- This is the ultimate mystery to solve.

[00:17:41.07]
You know, how the universe works.

[00:17:44.04]
- Bohr may have had his
own insight about this,

[00:17:48.02]
that one of the ways to unlock the meaning

[00:17:52.00]
of the quantum shift in
terms of humanity's story,

[00:17:55.05]
because the quantum shift is
fundamentally a story happening

[00:17:59.09]
on the human,

[00:18:02.05]
that the only way in
would be through poetry.

[00:18:09.03]
[dark ambient music]

[00:18:39.02]
[tense music continues]

[00:18:45.08]
- [James] Every new
religion, powerful idea,

[00:18:49.02]
or revolutionary moment
comes with an origin myth.

[00:18:52.05]
Quantum mechanics is no exception.

[00:18:54.07]
In many accounts, quantum
mechanics emerges full-grown

[00:18:57.08]
from the impressive minds
of the Nobel Laureates,

[00:19:00.01]
past and future, gathered at
the 1927 Solvay Conference

[00:19:03.05]
in Brussels.

[00:19:04.08]
This myth was propagated on
the third day of the conference

[00:19:08.00]
when Werner Heisenberg
and Max Born went so far

[00:19:11.01]
as to declare, "We
consider quantum mechanics

[00:19:14.01]
"to be a closed theory,
whose fundamental physical

[00:19:16.07]
"and mathematical assumptions
are no longer susceptible

[00:19:19.05]
"to any modification."

[00:19:22.05]
But the old guard of classical
physics was not about

[00:19:25.00]
to give up without a fight.

[00:19:26.06]
Louis de Broglie presented
particles riding pilot waves,

[00:19:30.09]
but his theory required an
elusive hidden variable.

[00:19:34.09]
Erwin Schrodinger posited waves

[00:19:36.05]
that could exist in
multidimensional spaces,

[00:19:39.03]
but only in the form of
abstract calculations.

[00:19:42.08]
And on the last day,

[00:19:45.01]
Albert Einstein mounted
a pitched final defense,

[00:19:47.09]
a proliferation of double-slit
thought experiments intended

[00:19:50.09]
to reveal the incompleteness
of quantum mechanics.

[00:19:54.04]
But Einstein's baroque apparatus fell

[00:19:57.00]
under the hammer blows of Bohr's critique

[00:20:00.01]
and the inescapability of
the uncertainty principle.

[00:20:03.07]
What ultimately separated

[00:20:05.00]
the so-called quantum instrumentalist

[00:20:07.05]
from the old school realist was the idea,

[00:20:10.08]
eventually backed by experimental proofs,

[00:20:13.01]
that more than one truth could
be true at the same time.

[00:20:16.05]
In particular,

[00:20:17.06]
that light could be both
a wave and a particle

[00:20:20.05]
up until the moment of
observation or measurement.

[00:20:23.03]
No one promoted this paradox
more doggedly than Bohr.

[00:20:27.02]
[ethereal ambient music]

[00:20:35.02]
And no principle captured
this radical new picture

[00:20:38.02]
of reality better than Bohr's
concept of complementarity,

[00:20:41.06]
in which mutually exclusive descriptions

[00:20:43.09]
of particular phenomena,

[00:20:45.05]
like light as a wave and particle,

[00:20:47.04]
would be considered as complementary

[00:20:49.05]
rather than contradictory.

[00:20:52.03]
Introduced earlier at the
International Physics Conference

[00:20:55.02]
as the quantum postulate,

[00:20:57.09]
complementarity would
become a founding principle

[00:21:00.07]
of the so-called
Copenhagen Interpretation.

[00:21:04.00]
Yet, complementarity rarely
rates more than a footnote

[00:21:07.03]
in contemporary stories
of quantum mechanics.

[00:21:10.02]
To better understand why,
we went to Copenhagen

[00:21:13.00]
and the Niels Bohr Institute.

[00:21:15.06]
But first, we made a virtual
stop for a high-level briefing

[00:21:18.09]
from Project Q researcher Nick Harrington,

[00:21:21.08]
to see how Bohr's concept
of complementarity,

[00:21:24.06]
along with superposition, uncertainty,

[00:21:27.00]
and other quantum principles,

[00:21:28.05]
had implications far beyond
the small world of atoms

[00:21:32.03]
and into the interactions
of people, states,

[00:21:34.09]
and complex systems.

[00:21:40.06]
- Despite receiving
the Nobel Prize in 1922

[00:21:43.08]
for his services in the investigation

[00:21:45.09]
of the structure of atoms

[00:21:47.05]
and of the radiation emanating from them,

[00:21:50.01]
Niels Bohr considered his
theory of complementarity

[00:21:53.06]
his most important contribution.

[00:21:56.01]
Bohr's theory of complementarity
was the basis for his view

[00:22:00.03]
that quantum was a complete theory.

[00:22:03.04]
In many ways, complementarity connected

[00:22:06.04]
all the major quantum concepts together

[00:22:08.07]
under one unified framework.

[00:22:11.05]
Superposition, for example,
describes the quantum state

[00:22:15.01]
prior to the need for complementarity.

[00:22:17.07]
It is only after the
wave function collapses,

[00:22:20.06]
once the quantum state has transitioned

[00:22:22.07]
from superposition to a determined state,

[00:22:25.04]
that complementarity becomes necessary.

[00:22:29.04]
This is because it is the
collapse of the wave function,

[00:22:32.04]
what happens as a result
of human observation

[00:22:34.06]
and measurement, that generates situations

[00:22:37.08]
where mutually exclusive descriptions

[00:22:40.02]
of the same phenomenon arise.

[00:22:43.01]
Through the act of measurement,

[00:22:44.09]
the human observer disturbs
the quantum system,

[00:22:47.08]
introducing what Heisenberg
referred to as uncertainty,

[00:22:51.02]
determining one possible set of values

[00:22:53.09]
according to those permitted
by the wave function,

[00:22:57.06]
at the expense of all other potentials.

[00:23:00.09]
Therefore, the theory of
complementarity can be understood

[00:23:05.00]
as a necessary condition

[00:23:07.01]
for a complete account of quantum theory

[00:23:09.06]
due to the uncertainty introduced
into the quantum system

[00:23:12.09]
by the human observer, what
is generally referred to

[00:23:16.03]
as the measurement problem.

[00:23:18.08]
[ethereal ambient music]

[00:23:21.09]
- We're surrounded by measuring devices.

[00:23:24.03]
Our phones measure the signals.

[00:23:27.04]
The MRI machines measure
the electromagnetic fields

[00:23:32.07]
that we produce in order to
make medical diagnostics.

[00:23:37.05]
We have antennas looking at the sky

[00:23:41.01]
in order to learn about the
universe surrounding us.

[00:23:46.01]
Everything is about measurement.

[00:23:48.00]
And now, 100 years ago,

[00:23:51.07]
quantum mechanics and the
founding fathers told us

[00:23:55.04]
that it is not possible
to measure everything

[00:23:59.01]
with arbitrary accuracy.

[00:24:01.01]
There are quantum uncertainties.

[00:24:04.01]
And Niels Bohr was one
of the big names in that,

[00:24:10.09]
and he found the
complementarity principle,

[00:24:16.06]
which says that the object can behave

[00:24:20.09]
as a particle and as a wave.

[00:24:22.04]
So either you know where it is,

[00:24:24.03]
or you know what speed it has.

[00:24:27.00]
- We had this complimentary
view of things, you know,

[00:24:31.07]
things might have both
good and bad implications,

[00:24:35.01]
and he would work for
the good implications.

[00:24:37.05]
Bohr's subsequent work during
and after the Second World War

[00:24:41.07]
to develop an open world,

[00:24:43.03]
he had conversations with Churchill,

[00:24:45.06]
he had conversations with Roosevelt

[00:24:48.09]
to try to convince them to tell Stalin

[00:24:52.09]
that there was an atomic bomb on the way,

[00:24:57.07]
because otherwise he thought
there would be a terrible race,

[00:25:02.07]
you know, after the war,

[00:25:04.04]
which he wasn't wrong about, of course.

[00:25:07.05]
- The idea that quantum should
be able to accelerate AI

[00:25:10.09]
or quantum should be able to
accelerate machine learning is

[00:25:16.00]
the idea of why shouldn't it be able to?

[00:25:19.02]
I don't think human
capabilities is the goal.

[00:25:22.01]
I think something way beyond
human capabilities is the goal.

[00:25:26.04]
And you know, what we
are endeavoring to invent

[00:25:32.01]
isn't just an emulator of human thought.

[00:25:34.08]
I think that that's a small goal.

[00:25:36.09]
I mean, we just evolved to,
you know, to eat and reproduce.

[00:25:40.02]
We're, you know, we're not any
kind of endpoint of anything.

[00:25:43.02]
Now, some people would be
very scared by that idea.

[00:25:45.08]
Some people would be scared
by having something here

[00:25:48.03]
on Earth smarter than us, okay?

[00:25:50.08]
And they would say, "I
don't want anything.

[00:25:52.06]
"I don't want anything
around smarter than us."

[00:25:54.06]
Well, I don't feel that way.

[00:25:57.04]
- [Interviewer] What do you do here?

[00:25:58.09]
- I'm the philosopher of this place here.

[00:26:02.08]
He said, "Believe of this and this,

[00:26:04.04]
"and they can take this
advantage of your position."

[00:26:07.02]
And I don't think that Bohr likes that.

[00:26:10.01]
He said that,

[00:26:11.00]
"I am not dealing with
the reality of the world.

[00:26:14.03]
"I am dealing with pictures
of the real world,"

[00:26:18.00]
and that's exactly the point.

[00:26:19.04]
And that's why when we are
talking about the complementarity

[00:26:22.02]
of the concept of truth.

[00:26:25.05]
[dark ambient music]

[00:26:46.04]
[ethereal ambient music]

[00:26:55.05]
- [James] A particle that
behaves as if it can be

[00:26:57.07]
in two places at once.

[00:27:00.06]
The qubits that spin up,

[00:27:01.06]
spin down at the same time.

[00:27:04.06]
A cat that is both dead and alive

[00:27:06.08]
until we look inside the box.

[00:27:08.07]
All are in quantum
states of superposition.

[00:27:12.07]
Long before the word entered the lexicon

[00:27:14.08]
of quantum mechanics,

[00:27:15.09]
superposition made its first appearance

[00:27:17.07]
in the works of Thomas Hobbes.

[00:27:20.03]
Hobbes was better known

[00:27:21.06]
for his political
masterpiece, "Leviathan."

[00:27:24.05]
He was also known as a founding father,

[00:27:26.02]
along with Machiavelli,

[00:27:28.01]
of the so-called Realist
school of geopolitics,

[00:27:30.04]
in which sovereign states
bounce off each other

[00:27:32.09]
like billiard balls in a
perpetual struggle for power

[00:27:36.01]
under conditions of international anarchy.

[00:27:39.01]
Hobbes also styled
himself a mathematician,

[00:27:41.07]
and in 1656 he set out in

[00:27:44.04]
"Six Lessons to the
Professors of Mathematics"

[00:27:47.01]
to prove that the circle could be squared.

[00:27:50.03]
It was also in this essay

[00:27:51.01]
that Hobbes coined the
new term "superposition"

[00:27:53.07]
to describe, in his words,
the action or practice

[00:27:57.00]
of notionally moving one figure

[00:27:58.08]
into the position occupied by another

[00:28:01.01]
so as to show that they are congruent.

[00:28:03.09]
His proof was quickly shot
down by his arch-nemesis,

[00:28:06.08]
John Wallis, professor
of geometry at Oxford,

[00:28:09.05]
and not coincidentally
the chief cryptographer

[00:28:12.07]
to the royal court.

[00:28:13.05]
Like his mathematical proofs,

[00:28:15.03]
Hobbes' new term did not
catch on at the time.

[00:28:18.01]
Nevertheless, superposition
would become one

[00:28:20.02]
of the most important,

[00:28:21.04]
if not strangest concepts
in quantum mechanics.

[00:28:24.08]
And, along with its twin
concept entanglement,

[00:28:27.06]
it is now central to the effort

[00:28:29.02]
to build a quantum computer
based on superposition qubits.

[00:28:34.04]
To better understand the
revolutionary potential

[00:28:36.04]
of superposition, we
traveled to Singapore,

[00:28:40.01]
where 300 scientists and students gathered

[00:28:42.04]
at the first international conference

[00:28:44.02]
on quantum communication,
measurement, and computing.

[00:28:48.00]
We first met with Parag Khanna,

[00:28:49.09]
a geo-strategic expert
living in Singapore,

[00:28:52.07]
who highlighted the superpositioned
and complimentary nature

[00:28:55.08]
of the city-state from
its very beginnings,

[00:28:58.01]
as first captured in a 1819 letter

[00:29:00.06]
by its colonial founder, Thomas Raffles.

[00:29:05.01]
- He famously said, "Our
aim is trade not territory."

[00:29:09.08]
And it's obviously words that
Singapore has come to live by.

[00:29:13.09]
Asia is still the world's factory floor

[00:29:16.00]
from that traditional 19th
century production standpoint,

[00:29:18.07]
but also they're making the
fastest and largest investments

[00:29:23.00]
in the newer technologies
of connectivities.

[00:29:25.05]
The broader trend that also
reinforces this is just trying

[00:29:28.09]
to move away from western dependence

[00:29:30.04]
in the area of public goods
in general, which is to say

[00:29:33.09]
western provision of security guarantees.

[00:29:36.02]
So even though many of China's
neighbors, for example,

[00:29:39.03]
are fearful of China's
hegemonic ambitions,

[00:29:42.03]
at the same time,

[00:29:43.06]
they don't want to have
an outside hegemon either.

[00:29:46.05]
So there is what I call an
Asia for Asians movement.

[00:29:50.01]
Clearly the quantum turn is more

[00:29:52.02]
like a quantum incorporation
of the newest methodologies

[00:29:56.03]
and technologies into
this research apparatus

[00:29:59.01]
that is fairly robust
across these governments.

[00:30:01.02]
So, they're angling to do
very well in this race.

[00:30:07.01]
- Physics at the end of the century,

[00:30:09.00]
we thought we had it all figured out.

[00:30:10.05]
There's just one or two little things

[00:30:12.02]
that still need to be cleaned up.

[00:30:13.07]
And then,

[00:30:16.07]
that turned out not to be the case.

[00:30:18.00]
There was the ultraviolet catastrophe.

[00:30:20.02]
We suddenly had nuclear physics,

[00:30:22.09]
and all of the physics that was developed

[00:30:25.02]
during the 20th century

[00:30:26.02]
no one could have dreamed about before,

[00:30:27.08]
just because the
understanding was you have,

[00:30:32.03]
you think you're 99% of the way there,

[00:30:34.03]
and then when you get
into that 1%, you find,

[00:30:36.06]
oh, it's much bigger
than you thought before.

[00:30:38.07]
And I would not at all be
surprised if that happens again.

[00:30:42.03]
I mean, we've been using quantum mechanics

[00:30:43.05]
quite successfully for about 100 years.

[00:30:45.09]
So it's high time we start solving some

[00:30:50.06]
of those last little things

[00:30:52.01]
that we're still concerned about.

[00:30:53.05]
- If you were gonna look at a race,

[00:30:54.07]
it's the most clearly there's a race

[00:30:56.04]
between what should we build
a quantum computer out of.

[00:31:00.08]
Out of ions, so individual atoms.

[00:31:03.00]
Out of superconducting devices,

[00:31:04.05]
or out of semiconductor devices.

[00:31:06.07]
And at the moment, it's pretty clear

[00:31:08.03]
that superconducting
devices are in the lead.

[00:31:11.00]
If you count by, for example,

[00:31:13.01]
how many logical elements
can they control?

[00:31:17.01]
And their progress in recent years

[00:31:19.08]
has been really impressive.

[00:31:21.06]
Ernest Rutherford is very
important in this whole story

[00:31:24.05]
of how we came to
understand quantum physics

[00:31:26.08]
and the structure of the atom.

[00:31:28.06]
- [Interviewer] But
you're just saying that

[00:31:29.08]
because you're a Kiwi.

[00:31:30.07]
- No, I'm not just saying that
'cause I'm a Kiwi. [laughs]

[00:31:33.08]
That's actually true. [laughs]

[00:31:40.01]
- Can you control the quantum world?

[00:31:41.07]
So it's really understanding
nature, its fundamental level,

[00:31:44.04]
and can we actually
control the quantum states?

[00:31:46.04]
If we can, then, you know,
it has all these predictions

[00:31:48.08]
of, you know, parallel computing power

[00:31:51.00]
and, you know, secure communication,

[00:31:52.09]
both of which are highly valuable.

[00:31:55.00]
But I guess that every
individual is gonna have

[00:31:56.05]
which killer app they
think is the most relevant.

[00:31:59.05]
As a scientist, for me,
it's actually building

[00:32:01.06]
the quantum computer itself

[00:32:02.05]
and using it to help design itself

[00:32:04.02]
is probably the one that
I'm most excited by.

[00:32:06.08]
In Australia, one of the things
I've been very keen about is

[00:32:09.03]
that we constantly interact
with defense and with government

[00:32:12.02]
and we update them, you
know, really regularly

[00:32:14.06]
about how the technology's evolving,

[00:32:16.00]
where it's likely to go.

[00:32:18.07]
- I'm sure people will find a way

[00:32:22.01]
to use quantum computers in warfare.

[00:32:25.07]
There is no doubt about it.

[00:32:29.04]
So, but you know, the
nuclear weapon, right?

[00:32:34.00]
It's a horrible thing to have.

[00:32:36.09]
But as 70 years of history show,

[00:32:40.07]
it would be a horrible thing to not have.

[00:32:44.05]
- If you look at the kinds of
systems we're developing today

[00:32:48.05]
that can do machine
learning, we see potential

[00:32:51.04]
for accelerating those
fundamental learning algorithms

[00:32:54.02]
by using quantum techniques,
by significant factors.

[00:32:57.06]
So, we think ultimately
this is really gonna be

[00:33:00.01]
far more significant for humanity

[00:33:03.06]
than applications of quantum computing

[00:33:05.05]
into things like code breaking,

[00:33:07.02]
which traditionally has
sort of most people think is

[00:33:09.07]
the killer app today, but
we don't really think that.

[00:33:13.02]
- Our encryption standards
will have to change.

[00:33:15.09]
Whether this becomes
quantum key distribution

[00:33:18.02]
or post-quantum crypto, no
one knows, but what we know,

[00:33:21.05]
what we have now has to
change for the future.

[00:33:24.01]
There's been a few examples recently

[00:33:26.07]
where people have started looking

[00:33:28.00]
at these post-quantum crypto schemes,

[00:33:30.06]
one out of GCHQ in the UK,

[00:33:34.05]
who are the NSA equivalents in a sense.

[00:33:38.03]
There's a crypto system
that they called Soliloquy,

[00:33:42.05]
which they spent a few years developing,

[00:33:43.09]
which is a post-quantum crypto scheme.

[00:33:46.02]
It seemed to work nicely.

[00:33:47.04]
Then they looked at trying
to do a quantum attack on it

[00:33:50.04]
and it broke. [laughs]

[00:33:52.05]
- The question is,

[00:33:53.03]
what did I think about
the movie "Ant-Man"?

[00:33:54.09]
And I was very happy to be asked that

[00:33:57.03]
because I had a realization

[00:33:59.03]
that I understand now how he
actually manages to shrink.

[00:34:02.08]
And the issue is that, of course,
we're all made up of atoms

[00:34:06.05]
and the atoms have a nuclei

[00:34:07.05]
and they're surrounded by electrons.

[00:34:09.05]
If you can convert the
electrons instead into muons,

[00:34:13.00]
muons are basically heavy electrons,

[00:34:15.00]
they're 200 times heavier than electrons,

[00:34:17.06]
it turns out that the
radius of the atoms shrinks

[00:34:19.06]
by one over that mass.

[00:34:20.07]
So they go down by a factor of 200.

[00:34:23.01]
And at the very end,

[00:34:24.03]
he shrinks down more to the quantum realm.

[00:34:26.00]
So if you go from muons to tau particles,

[00:34:28.02]
which are yet even heavier electrons,

[00:34:30.00]
then you become even much
more, much more small.

[00:34:32.07]
- Do you guys just put the word "quantum"

[00:34:33.09]
in front of everything?

[00:34:35.07]
- If the question is,

[00:34:36.06]
when will we see a quantum
computer in real action?

[00:34:39.06]
The answer to that question
has always been "in 15 years,"

[00:34:43.01]
and I think it is still in 15 years.

[00:34:45.01]
And, well, ask me in 10, 15 years,

[00:34:47.02]
and I'll probably give
you the same answer again.

[00:34:51.01]
[dark ambient music]

[00:35:27.04]
- [James] In the late spring
of 1925, Werner Heisenberg,

[00:35:30.00]
desperately seeking relief
from his pollen allergies,

[00:35:32.09]
escapes to the wind swept
island of Heligoland

[00:35:35.04]
in the North Sea.

[00:35:36.08]
In one evening and into the early morning,

[00:35:39.05]
he works out the mathematical
structures, matrix algebra,

[00:35:43.03]
to prove that atoms are not
miniature solar systems,

[00:35:46.06]
but a cloud of probabilities
until measured.

[00:35:49.06]
As he would later put it,

[00:35:51.01]
the idea of uncertainty
"simply presented itself."

[00:36:02.04]
[rhythmic metallic scraping]

[00:36:15.07]
[ominous ambient drones]

[00:36:20.06]
- Technologically, there's a lot of buzz

[00:36:22.08]
around AI and cyber.

[00:36:24.09]
And among the AI and cyber experts I know,

[00:36:27.06]
there seems to be a lack of appreciation

[00:36:30.02]
for the inextricable link to quantum.

[00:36:33.00]
- Public anxiety about quantum is nil.

[00:36:36.01]
People do not report any kind of concern.

[00:36:38.01]
And that is in contrast to
things like synthetic biology,

[00:36:40.06]
artificial intelligence, et cetera.

[00:36:43.00]
- One current concept of
concern for me is the idea

[00:36:46.03]
of technological hype or
extravagant expectations about

[00:36:50.06]
new and emerging technologies

[00:36:52.05]
in the context of the future.

[00:36:54.06]
- The main conclusion
is that the investment

[00:36:57.02]
that is being devoted to
investigating technologies

[00:37:01.02]
that have to do with
with quantum computing

[00:37:03.08]
is generating a tremendous amount

[00:37:05.04]
of fundamental breakthroughs
and fundamental discoveries.

[00:37:08.05]
And that furthers our
understanding of the universe.

[00:37:11.01]
- So right now, now we're
getting to a place where we,

[00:37:13.08]
probably the solution is gonna
be some hybridized scheme.

[00:37:17.01]
I mentioned photons and ions,

[00:37:18.00]
and these aren't all the approaches.

[00:37:19.06]
We've got topological schemes in Microsoft

[00:37:22.03]
and we have superconnecting schemes,

[00:37:25.02]
that's what Google and IBM are doing.

[00:37:26.06]
They're gonna run into
their problems, too.

[00:37:28.08]
- Whether having the big
companies like Google, IBM,

[00:37:33.02]
and Microsoft involved with
building quantum computers,

[00:37:37.06]
how this affects academia,
and does it stifle things,

[00:37:41.07]
does it make it too hard to
compete, or does it help?

[00:37:45.04]
And questions about
non-disclosure agreements,

[00:37:48.05]
does this stifle scientific inquiry?

[00:37:51.05]
- Now this is actually a fun run,

[00:37:54.02]
not a nationalistic race,

[00:37:59.02]
Americans versus the Chinese

[00:38:00.08]
or whatever state player you want,

[00:38:02.07]
secret organizations versus
other secret organizations.

[00:38:05.08]
But this is university
researchers leading the field

[00:38:09.09]
across the world, working together.

[00:38:12.03]
- At some point, somebody is gonna think

[00:38:14.02]
there's a tipping point,

[00:38:15.05]
in which case it looks
like the race can be won

[00:38:18.09]
and then it won't be a fun run anymore.

[00:38:20.08]
It will be all about who
is actually gonna get

[00:38:23.05]
to that tipping point first.

[00:38:25.01]
- I'm afraid that we have
missed the opportunity

[00:38:27.07]
to pursue something truly
international in the scale

[00:38:31.02]
that will allow us to put
resource together in, let's say,

[00:38:34.06]
developing a general-purpose
quantum computer.

[00:38:38.01]
- Well, there's some very
exciting work in China

[00:38:39.07]
in quantum technology, quantum
communications in particular,

[00:38:42.07]
led by the group of
Professor Jian-Wei Pan,

[00:38:45.03]
very well funded by
the Chinese government.

[00:38:47.04]
But one of their really
noteworthy achievements was

[00:38:50.04]
the quantum satellite.

[00:38:51.02]
So they put a satellite in low-Earth orbit

[00:38:54.00]
with a quantum light source, a laser,

[00:38:56.02]
a generation of entanglement, photons,

[00:38:58.05]
and they demonstrated
a quantum secure leak.

[00:39:01.02]
- Yeah, I'm always
concerned about the ill uses

[00:39:04.00]
and the abuses of these
type of technologies,

[00:39:06.09]
considering that there
is massive investment

[00:39:09.04]
in China going on with respect to this,

[00:39:12.02]
in light of surveillance
capitalism and the way

[00:39:15.06]
in which what are now already
very powerful algorithms

[00:39:19.02]
and computing processing systems,

[00:39:21.03]
let alone quantum, leave that out,

[00:39:23.01]
just look at what exists today.

[00:39:25.04]
These are being used
principally to shape people,

[00:39:28.05]
shape their conversations,

[00:39:30.00]
monitor everything they do
in ways that are having,

[00:39:33.06]
I believe, wide-scale detrimental effects

[00:39:36.03]
on society and politics.

[00:39:38.06]
- The possibility that we are going

[00:39:40.09]
to deploy some of these weapons

[00:39:42.08]
without understanding the escalation risk.

[00:39:46.09]
You know, we stopped
short of responding to,

[00:39:50.03]
the United States,

[00:39:51.02]
of responding to the election hack in 2016

[00:39:56.01]
because President Obama, rightly so,

[00:39:58.01]
was worried that if we did something,

[00:39:59.09]
the Russians could come back

[00:40:01.02]
into the actual election machines.

[00:40:05.00]
So, it proves that you can have

[00:40:08.05]
the world's greatest
offensive cyber machine

[00:40:12.02]
and you won't use it

[00:40:14.00]
if you've got the most vulnerable society.

[00:40:17.02]
And we will have the
most vulnerable society

[00:40:19.03]
for a long, long time.

[00:40:21.02]
- And we have the dilemma
with quantum that,

[00:40:23.04]
and with maybe also
artificial intelligence,

[00:40:25.08]
some of the related issues,

[00:40:27.00]
that the danger at the collective level

[00:40:29.08]
of this going horribly wrong
probably has to be securitized,

[00:40:33.09]
but at the same time you risk feeding

[00:40:36.03]
into the most destructive version
of the state-against-state

[00:40:40.00]
or company-against-company competition

[00:40:42.02]
where it can get very destructive.

[00:40:43.08]
- I also think that quantum
is an aspirational solution

[00:40:47.03]
for a problem we already have, right?

[00:40:49.06]
So we have, you know, pick your poison,

[00:40:51.08]
you can call it hybrid warfare,

[00:40:53.01]
you can call it multi-domain warfare.

[00:40:55.00]
I call it transversal warfare.

[00:40:57.05]
But you never know where you're fighting

[00:40:59.00]
when you're fighting in the
contemporary battlefield.

[00:41:00.09]
It's cyber, it's civilian,
it's improvised weapons,

[00:41:04.09]
it's heavy platform weapons,

[00:41:06.03]
and I think everyone hopes
that somehow quantum will mean

[00:41:10.02]
that we have control again, right?

[00:41:11.06]
So even the United States feels
a profound loss of control,

[00:41:16.06]
and I think part of the
mutual cycle of fear is

[00:41:19.08]
whoever gets control on chaos first

[00:41:22.02]
gets to wield it as a weapon.

[00:41:24.02]
- Uncertainty has always been
the one that stands out for me

[00:41:28.04]
because nothing is certain,

[00:41:30.04]
and living with that
uncertainty is not just a matter

[00:41:33.08]
of mathematical calculation,
it's a metaphysical problem.

[00:41:38.04]
- There's a possibility

[00:41:39.05]
that we're losing an opportunity
to become more humble

[00:41:42.09]
or to really embrace an uncertain
or non-determinist world

[00:41:47.03]
or, much more likely, I think,
and much more interestingly,

[00:41:51.01]
we might be missing an opportunity

[00:41:53.00]
to use the cosmological
implications of quantum mechanics

[00:41:57.01]
to actually invert or subvert

[00:42:00.03]
or completely break apart the
social-theoretic foundations

[00:42:03.03]
of our understanding of
what it means to be a human

[00:42:05.05]
and what a social system looks like.

[00:42:08.02]
- One of the things that we
don't have in machines yet

[00:42:11.04]
and will possibly hold us back

[00:42:13.01]
from ever having artificial
superintelligence

[00:42:15.08]
is any sort of consciousness.

[00:42:17.01]
And yet the problem is we
have no idea what that is

[00:42:19.05]
and how to program it when
we don't know what it is.

[00:42:22.09]
Again, that's where quantum may come in,

[00:42:24.04]
because there may be some, you know,

[00:42:26.02]
there may be some quantum
weirdness going on in our brains

[00:42:29.07]
that is responsible for our consciousness.

[00:42:32.02]
Or alternatively,

[00:42:33.04]
it may be something that
is actually just imagined.

[00:42:35.06]
Our brains are very good
at imagining things.

[00:42:40.08]
[birds chirping]

[00:42:47.00]
[dark ambient music]

[00:43:09.02]
[tranquil ambient music]

[00:43:38.06]
[audience applauds]

[00:43:41.07]
- Hello, I am Alex Wendt,

[00:43:43.07]
and I am a walking, talking
quantum wave function.

[00:43:46.09]
And guess what?

[00:43:48.02]
So are you.

[00:43:50.03]
I know this might sound
weird, which is okay

[00:43:53.01]
because quantum theory is weird,

[00:43:54.05]
but it's about to get weirder.

[00:43:56.05]
[swirling high-pitched tone]

[00:43:58.01]
Before we go there, what do
we know about quantum so far?

[00:44:02.01]
We know that energy comes
in discontinuous packets

[00:44:04.07]
of waves and particles called quanta.

[00:44:07.08]
We know that this wave particle
duality makes it impossible

[00:44:10.08]
to measure position and
momentum simultaneously

[00:44:13.07]
without changing both,

[00:44:15.03]
giving rise to the uncertainty principle.

[00:44:18.00]
In the quantum world,
objects cannot be said

[00:44:20.02]
to really exist prior to observation.

[00:44:25.07]
We know that subatomic
particles can become

[00:44:27.09]
inextricably linked and
in a sense communicate

[00:44:31.05]
without any apparent causal connection,

[00:44:33.08]
exhibiting what Einstein
dismissively called

[00:44:36.08]
"spooky action at a
distance" or entanglement.

[00:44:41.02]
And we know that quantum computing,

[00:44:43.05]
which is based on the
superposition of qubits

[00:44:46.02]
rather than the on/off
microcircuitry of digital bits,

[00:44:50.03]
is about to go operational,

[00:44:52.02]
which will be a real game changer.

[00:44:54.07]
One after the other,
through mathematical models,

[00:44:57.04]
laboratory experiments
and cosmic observations,

[00:45:00.05]
the quantum theories, principles

[00:45:02.01]
and effects have proven right.

[00:45:06.03]
I have a new proposition.

[00:45:08.00]
What if quantum effects reach
beyond the microscopic world

[00:45:11.02]
of particles and waves

[00:45:13.02]
and into the macroscopic
world of big objects

[00:45:16.02]
like our bodies and brains,

[00:45:18.04]
and in particular into the
realm of consciousness itself?

[00:45:23.07]
What if all our desires,
beliefs, and feelings,

[00:45:27.08]
meaning consciousness
and all its intentions,

[00:45:30.06]
are actually macroscopic
quantum mechanical phenomenon?

[00:45:34.05]
Human beings would be, not
metaphorically or analogically,

[00:45:38.05]
but actually be walking wave functions.

[00:45:42.01]
And since the rules, norms

[00:45:43.05]
and institutions that govern
our lives are also rooted

[00:45:46.07]
in our minds, this would mean
that not just my intentions,

[00:45:51.01]
but yours as well, and indeed
all of our shared intentions

[00:45:54.09]
including those of societies,
would be quantum systems too.

[00:46:00.06]
Mind blowing, yes?

[00:46:04.03]
Well, many scientists,

[00:46:06.00]
and not just classically
minded ones, might say no.

[00:46:09.04]
They would say that whatever
quantum weirdness is going on

[00:46:12.04]
at the subatomic level quickly washes out

[00:46:15.09]
at the macroscopic level.

[00:46:17.05]
This is a process known as decoherence.

[00:46:21.07]
Anything big, wet, warm and squishy

[00:46:24.01]
like the brain cannot on
this view possibly have

[00:46:27.06]
quantum properties.

[00:46:29.07]
There's only one problem with this claim.

[00:46:32.01]
No one really knows how the brain,

[00:46:34.00]
let alone consciousness, really works.

[00:46:37.01]
Dig into the science
and history of the mind

[00:46:41.01]
and one finds layers of metaphors

[00:46:43.01]
and technologies littering
the road to progress.

[00:46:47.08]
In the Middle Ages,

[00:46:48.08]
the mind and body were
composed of wet and dry,

[00:46:51.08]
warm and cold humors
whose flow is controlled

[00:46:54.09]
by sin and the stars, prayer and penance.

[00:47:00.00]
In the Age of Reason, the
body took on a Newtonian look,

[00:47:04.02]
all levers and pulleys

[00:47:05.05]
with a brain that ticked
away like fine clockwork

[00:47:09.00]
except when broken.

[00:47:12.06]
Come the telegraph and the telephone,

[00:47:14.07]
the corporeal and the mental
were all tied together

[00:47:17.07]
like wires and plugs on
an operator's switchboard.

[00:47:20.08]
- [Operator] We're sorry,
you have reached a number

[00:47:21.09]
that has been disconnected.

[00:47:23.02]
- With the transistor,
microprocessor, and networks,

[00:47:26.09]
the brain became a computer

[00:47:28.08]
and the mind a protoplasmic
version of the internet.

[00:47:33.00]
However, the mind-body problem persists,

[00:47:35.07]
and it's not likely to be solved

[00:47:37.03]
by gods, Houston, or Google.

[00:47:42.00]
Maybe we have been
looking in the wrong place

[00:47:43.09]
for the solution to the problem.

[00:47:46.06]
Let's start with the wet stuff, the brain.

[00:47:49.05]
Quantum brain theory holds
that the brain is capable

[00:47:52.00]
of sustaining macroscopic
quantum coherence.

[00:47:56.07]
So we are not only walking wave functions,

[00:47:59.03]
we are walking quantum computers.

[00:48:02.03]
This by itself does not
solve the mind-body problem

[00:48:05.03]
because it doesn't tell us

[00:48:06.04]
why those quantum computers
would be conscious.

[00:48:09.09]
But if true, it would allow us to project

[00:48:12.02]
all the quantum weirdness
going on at the subatomic level

[00:48:15.07]
up to the whole brain.

[00:48:18.07]
That in turn motivates the
second part of the theory,

[00:48:21.04]
which proposes that consciousness
is not just a property

[00:48:24.01]
of human beings or other
complex forms of matter,

[00:48:27.09]
but goes all the way down

[00:48:32.01]
to the structure of matter itself.

[00:48:34.03]
In short,

[00:48:35.03]
matter at the subatomic level
is intrinsically minded.

[00:48:40.08]
Perhaps consciousness is not
a classical phenomenon at all,

[00:48:44.07]
but a quantum one.

[00:48:49.04]
Whether this theory will
gain broad acceptance

[00:48:51.08]
remains to be seen, and in my view,

[00:48:54.05]
to follow the dictum of many physicists,

[00:48:56.09]
it is just too elegant not to be true.

[00:49:01.09]
So am I, are we, quantum
walking wave functions?

[00:49:06.06]
[tranquil piano and ambient music]

[00:49:10.07]
[curtain rattling]

[00:49:22.03]
- Sometimes, we just don't
know a big thing happening

[00:49:26.06]
and we are sleeping next to it, right?

[00:49:29.07]
Now, we know we are in a big thing.

[00:49:32.07]
This is the thing that we are doing now,

[00:49:34.08]
the theme of the conference,

[00:49:36.08]
trustworthy quantum information.

[00:49:39.09]
I'm hopeful that the conference can become

[00:49:43.00]
the Solvay Conference of
Trustworthy Quantum Information.

[00:49:46.06]
- If something is, it's important
to you it's a secret today

[00:49:50.01]
and you wish it to remain
secret for a year or two,

[00:49:52.02]
like a credit card number,
there's no consequence.

[00:49:55.04]
Just continue as you do today.

[00:49:58.03]
But whenever you're encrypting something

[00:50:00.03]
for which you wish it to
remain secret in 20 years,

[00:50:05.06]
you're taking big risks.

[00:50:07.01]
- The way that the
cryptography system works,

[00:50:09.09]
it's called RSA, is based on
multiplying two prime numbers.

[00:50:15.05]
So basically you take two large numbers,

[00:50:17.04]
you multiply them together,

[00:50:19.04]
and you have to keep
secret the prime numbers.

[00:50:22.03]
Now what Shor's Algorithm is

[00:50:23.06]
is a way for a quantum computer basically

[00:50:27.00]
to do this factoring in
a much faster timescale.

[00:50:31.07]
- If you think about using
public-key cryptography, right,

[00:50:35.02]
then in our future
computational power grows

[00:50:38.09]
and at some point you
will be able eventually

[00:50:41.07]
to crack these codes.

[00:50:43.05]
You can just record it,

[00:50:44.09]
and somewhere in the
future, you can crack it.

[00:50:46.08]
Not if you use quantum key distribution.

[00:50:49.00]
The key is basically
independent of future progress,

[00:50:52.06]
and that is the very essential part.

[00:50:55.04]
- You don't really want

[00:50:57.03]
even your own security
agencies being able to

[00:51:02.03]
break all the communications
of your citizenship, right?

[00:51:08.04]
That's not good for society probably, so.

[00:51:13.07]
[dark ambient music]

[00:51:47.07]
[shambolic rock music]

[00:51:49.04]
- [James] In an exchange of
letters over the summer of 1935,

[00:51:52.06]
Albert Einstein and Erwin
Schrodinger constructed

[00:51:55.00]
what they called "an infernal experiment."

[00:51:58.02]
"The Gedankenexperiment:
A Paradox in a Box,"

[00:52:01.06]
became the first mockumentary
of quantum mechanics.

[00:52:08.07]
[rock music continues]

[00:52:17.08]
- [Schrodinger] Guten Tag.

[00:52:18.07]
I am Herr Professor Dr.
Schrodinger, and who are you?

[00:52:22.03]
- Hey, Professor Doctor,
I am your lab assistant.

[00:52:25.04]
- [Schrodinger] Good.

[00:52:26.03]
Is the Gedankenexperiment ready?

[00:52:30.03]
- Yeah, well, we're
missing a couple of items.

[00:52:32.04]
I'm not sure where to get
any radioactive uranium.

[00:52:36.01]
- [Schrodinger] Kein Problem.

[00:52:36.09]
- [Schrodinger] Just borrow
some from Madame Curie.

[00:52:40.02]
But where's the lab?

[00:52:43.09]
- We're in the lab.

[00:52:45.07]
- [Schrodinger] Yeah, but
where is the Labrador?

[00:52:50.00]
- Oh, you want a dog?

[00:52:51.04]
Yeah, right.

[00:52:53.06]
- [Schrodinger] Go find one,
steal one if you must,

[00:52:55.06]
even if it means spending a night in jail.

[00:52:59.08]
And take some bolt cutters just in case.

[00:53:04.07]
[shambolic rock music]

[00:53:19.07]
Is everything ready?

[00:53:21.02]
- Uh, yep.

[00:53:22.00]
As you can see, I've
constructed it exactly

[00:53:24.06]
as you've described.

[00:53:26.03]
So in the top corner, we've
got the Geiger counter.

[00:53:29.09]
Now, that will detect whether
the uranium has decayed.

[00:53:34.01]
If it does decay, it
will release the ball,

[00:53:36.04]
which travels down the chute,

[00:53:38.07]
pushes the flaming car to the end,

[00:53:40.09]
which will cause the fist
to knock on the wall,

[00:53:44.00]
which triggers the door handle to open,

[00:53:46.01]
sending the hammer down

[00:53:47.00]
and smashing the flask of prussic acid

[00:53:49.08]
which will release poisonous gas.

[00:53:52.07]
- [Schrodinger] We shall now
see if the dog lives or dies.

[00:53:58.03]
- Thought this was just
like a good, good dank,

[00:54:01.01]
whatever experiment, right?

[00:54:03.03]
- [Schrodinger] Did you
learn that in lab school?

[00:54:05.05]
We are seeking a higher
truth than reality.

[00:54:08.04]
We need to find the hidden variable

[00:54:10.02]
that proves the dog is
either dead or alive.

[00:54:13.06]
We need to show those Copenhagen Dummköpfe

[00:54:16.06]
the absurdity of superposition
and entanglement.

[00:54:20.07]
Spukhafte Fernwirkung indeed.

[00:54:23.04]
- So the dog's gonna die?

[00:54:25.02]
- [Schrodinger] Quantum mechanics is not

[00:54:26.07]
for the faint-hearted.

[00:54:28.00]
The uranium decays and does not decay.

[00:54:30.04]
The poison gas is
released and not released.

[00:54:33.03]
The dog is both dead and alive.

[00:54:35.06]
We cannot know until we
open the box and observe it.

[00:54:39.00]
That's what the Copenhagen
crowd wants us to believe.

[00:54:43.05]
But don't worry, nature is not random

[00:54:46.04]
and God does not play
dice with the universe.

[00:54:49.08]
If Albert and I are wrong
about this, I will eat the dog.

[00:54:55.08]
Let's see the experiment.

[00:54:59.04]
[door latching]

[00:55:16.07]
[box lid thumping]

[00:55:19.00]
[atonal string music]

[00:55:28.00]
- [Interviewer] Werner?

[00:55:30.02]
What is the value of films for society?

[00:55:36.09]
- Films might change our...

[00:55:39.09]
our perspective of things,

[00:55:41.09]
and ultimately in the long term

[00:55:44.08]
it may be something valuable,

[00:55:47.06]
but there's a lot of
absurdity involved as well.

[00:55:56.04]
- [James] In 1957, Hugh
Everett proposed a solution

[00:55:59.07]
to the paradox of Schrodinger's
Gedankenexperiment.

[00:56:03.05]
Rather than a measurement

[00:56:04.06]
or an observation causing a
collapse of all possible worlds

[00:56:07.08]
into a single quantum state,
the wave function splits,

[00:56:11.02]
creating parallel and
independent realities.

[00:56:14.03]
[shambolic rock music]

[00:56:16.07]
But in other words,

[00:56:20.01]
and in one of all possible other worlds,

[00:56:26.07]
the dog lives.

[00:56:30.03]
♪ I wanna be a dog ♪

[00:56:34.00]
♪ I wanna be a dog ♪

[00:56:36.06]
- [James] A series of
experiments in the 1960s and '70s

[00:56:39.03]
would ultimately prove the
Copenhagen interpretation right,

[00:56:42.04]
and Schrodinger and Einstein wrong.

[00:56:45.01]
Until observed, the
cat was dead and alive,

[00:56:48.01]
neither dead nor alive.

[00:56:50.02]
No experiment has yet to demonstrate

[00:56:52.03]
that the dog might live on in
one of many other universes.

[00:56:55.09]
However, Schrodinger's
paradox in a box inspired

[00:56:59.00]
Oxford physicist David Deutsch

[00:57:01.02]
to conduct his own thought
experiments in 1985.

[00:57:04.08]
What if the cat, dog, or
in this case electron,

[00:57:07.09]
could communicate not only in this world,

[00:57:09.09]
but across all possible worlds,

[00:57:12.03]
not only in binary states
of alive, dead, on, off,

[00:57:15.08]
or zero, one, but in entangled
states of superposition?

[00:57:20.04]
Deutsch's brilliant idea
earned him the title,

[00:57:22.09]
Father of Quantum Computing,

[00:57:24.06]
one that he probably should have shared

[00:57:26.06]
with Richard Feynman and Yuri Manin.

[00:57:29.01]
But their ideas paved the way

[00:57:30.07]
for a new revolution in computing

[00:57:32.06]
based on subatomic
quantum bits, or qubits.

[00:57:36.05]
The race to build the first
quantum computer was on,

[00:57:39.05]
and to get a roadside view
we traveled to Silicon Valley

[00:57:42.09]
and then on to Shanghai, China.

[00:57:45.07]
- [James] Yep, we're on our way.

[00:57:48.01]
- Clearly, quantum is
going to be a huge change

[00:57:50.07]
because it technically
violates what we see,

[00:57:53.03]
everything around us.

[00:57:54.08]
And so, and I think that's
what makes quantum mechanics

[00:57:57.07]
so hard to understand,
because there is no,

[00:58:00.02]
if I step outside, you know,

[00:58:03.00]
there is no way to prove to me

[00:58:05.01]
that actually quantum mechanics is true.

[00:58:07.01]
And so it all feels very
exotic and abstract.

[00:58:11.02]
And I think if there has
to be a paradigm shift,

[00:58:13.03]
there has to be evidence that
we can actually use it easily.

[00:58:28.08]
- Richard Feynman was one of the founders

[00:58:31.00]
of Quantum Information Theory,

[00:58:33.04]
and I think he was
basically the first person

[00:58:36.04]
to propose to build a quantum computer.

[00:58:39.06]
[percussive drumming]

[00:58:44.04]
Once you start using a quantum computer

[00:58:47.00]
and start doing these experiments,

[00:58:49.03]
the quantum nature of the
world becomes something

[00:58:52.01]
that you internalize and make sense

[00:58:54.08]
and you kind of agree with it.

[00:58:56.06]
"Okay, that's the way the world works."

[00:58:58.08]
And it kind of demystifies it

[00:59:00.09]
in this kind of a really unusual way.

[00:59:04.03]
For myself, thinking of it as a race

[00:59:06.07]
is not necessarily so useful.

[00:59:08.08]
It's good to have a
competitive environment.

[00:59:12.03]
It always pushes you.

[00:59:14.00]
But I think that the race
is more against nature.

[00:59:17.07]
And if we can do an experiment

[00:59:19.08]
that checks the results
against a big supercomputer,

[00:59:23.03]
I think that's gonna be fairly convincing

[00:59:26.02]
to the people in the computer
science and technology field,

[00:59:30.06]
Silicon Valley managers
and executives if you like,

[00:59:34.04]
that, you know, this is
not just some pipe dream,

[00:59:36.08]
but it's really coming to be reality.

[00:59:39.03]
The one thing you learn
about qubits is, you know,

[00:59:42.00]
on paper everything looks good,

[00:59:43.08]
and then you start building
it and doing things like this,

[00:59:46.08]
and then you see all the
things that can go wrong

[00:59:49.02]
and the imperfections
and your assumptions.

[00:59:52.01]
But what's been amazing is,

[00:59:53.04]
as people work on it more and more,

[00:59:56.05]
you can kind of work
around the imperfections

[00:59:59.01]
or solve them and get things to work.

[01:00:01.08]
It just takes time to figure
out, you know, what to do.

[01:00:10.02]
- Well, I think the most interesting thing

[01:00:11.07]
about quantum mechanics is the
phenomenon of entanglement.

[01:00:16.07]
So what is entanglement?

[01:00:17.08]
Well, in classical physics
you can have a system

[01:00:21.08]
which is made out of parts,

[01:00:24.02]
and there's a nice property

[01:00:26.01]
which is that if you know everything

[01:00:28.04]
that you can possibly know
about the whole system,

[01:00:31.07]
then you also know everything
you can possibly know

[01:00:34.01]
about its parts.

[01:00:35.09]
So that seems very sensible, right?

[01:00:37.04]
That seems like a good way
for things to be organized.

[01:00:40.06]
The amazing thing about quantum mechanics

[01:00:42.03]
is that this is false.

[01:00:44.01]
So in quantum mechanics,
you can have a joint system

[01:00:47.01]
where you know everything
that you can possibly know

[01:00:49.09]
about the joint system,

[01:00:51.07]
but you know absolutely
nothing about its parts.

[01:00:56.09]
And this is so surprising, you know.

[01:00:58.08]
In some sense, it is the thing
which is counterintuitive

[01:01:02.03]
in quantum mechanics.

[01:01:04.09]
When we ask why are quantum
computers interesting,

[01:01:07.03]
why are they better than
classical computers?

[01:01:09.01]
Ultimately, it's because
they're using entanglement.

[01:01:13.03]
- [Speaker 1] If you don't
leave in about 10 minutes,

[01:01:14.04]
the police are coming.

[01:01:15.07]
- [James] Okay, all right.

[01:01:17.00]
If we wanna go that route, that's okay.

[01:01:21.04]
[indistinct chatter]

[01:01:27.09]
[gentle piano music]

[01:01:34.09]
[indistinct chatter]

[01:02:04.02]
[indistinct chatter]

[01:02:30.09]
[traffic noise]

[01:02:53.08]
[child exclaiming in Chinese dialect]

[01:03:03.01]
- Some of my labs will be here.

[01:03:06.00]
- [James] This is where
the labs are gonna be?

[01:03:07.05]
- Yeah, yeah.
- Oh, wow.

[01:03:08.04]
- 'Cause all the silver
conducting doesn't require...

[01:03:11.09]
- The shielding?

[01:03:13.01]
- ...filming or shielding,

[01:03:14.04]
because everything
shielded under minus 263.5.

[01:03:23.06]
[construction noises]

[01:03:35.01]
We did a quantum teleportation experiment

[01:03:37.08]
over 16 kilometers, yes, this year.

[01:03:42.01]
- [James] This is like
the experiment they did

[01:03:43.00]
in Vienna, too.

[01:03:43.08]
- [Speaker] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

[01:03:46.02]
- [James] And what's this one up here?

[01:03:47.06]
- Ah, this is Tienanmen Square.

[01:03:50.05]
We provide some secure
communications in this activity.

[01:03:56.01]
Quantum network used in financial.

[01:03:58.04]
- [James] Banking.

[01:03:59.03]
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, yes.

[01:04:02.02]
- [James] Oh, that's the--

[01:04:04.03]
- This telephone is secured
by quantum communication.

[01:04:10.06]
This is the second time
President Xi came to USTC.

[01:04:17.05]
This is our concept light.

[01:04:22.03]
- [James] Now they're
all involved in quantum?

[01:04:26.01]
- [Speaker] Uh, yeah.

[01:04:27.05]
This one, and you also know
maybe Tencent, this one.

[01:04:32.03]
This is bank, bank, bank, bank, bank.

[01:04:38.00]
[both laughing]

[01:04:39.05]
- [James] So the banks
are heavily dependent

[01:04:41.02]
upon quantum encryption then?

[01:04:43.03]
- [Speaker] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:04:47.08]
- So the quantum science
satellite project was led

[01:04:50.09]
by Professor Jian-Wei Pan.

[01:04:53.01]
It have multiple scientific goals.

[01:04:57.04]
One is to establish ground-to-satellite

[01:05:00.07]
quantum communication

[01:05:02.02]
so that we can greatly extend

[01:05:05.07]
the secure communication range

[01:05:09.01]
from about 200 kilometers
without, you know,

[01:05:13.06]
just use optical fiber, to
perhaps thousands of kilometers

[01:05:19.04]
in outer space.

[01:05:20.09]
Yeah, I think definitely it
is a very intensive race,

[01:05:25.08]
like Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

[01:05:29.09]
They all, you know, invest
heavily on quantum computers,

[01:05:34.07]
and I think China will
also invest some money

[01:05:40.05]
on quantum computers.

[01:05:42.00]
One article I read with great interest,

[01:05:46.02]
the title is, you know,

[01:05:48.01]
the distance between we and
God is the quantum computer.

[01:05:53.00]
Because we only 200 logic qubits,

[01:05:57.06]
200 is already-- the number is larger

[01:06:02.01]
than all the particles in the universe.

[01:06:05.00]
So I cannot imagine,
like, what we would have,

[01:06:09.07]
like a billion logic qubits.

[01:06:12.05]
That will be, that's out
of my mind, I cannot.

[01:06:15.05]
I don't have the ability to predict, yeah.

[01:06:21.09]
[hammer taps]

[01:06:23.03]
- [James] And have they
actually found fossils?

[01:06:24.03]
- [Speaker] Yeah, yeah.

[01:06:25.04]
- [James] Really?

[01:06:26.07]
- Yeah, yeah, it's... [indistinct].

[01:06:31.08]
- [James] That's great.

[01:06:35.00]
[hammer tapping]

[01:06:39.07]
- I think it's working very well.

[01:06:41.05]
It's almost only a little fossil left.

[01:06:45.08]
[dark ambient music]

[01:07:05.03]
[ethereal ambient music]

[01:07:10.00]
- [James] Over the past several years,

[01:07:11.03]
Project Q has invited a
singularly diverse group

[01:07:14.03]
to Q Station, the former
quarantine site of Sydney Harbor.

[01:07:17.08]
Physicists and philosophers,
computer and social scientists,

[01:07:21.00]
artists and writers, lawyers, diplomats,

[01:07:23.03]
and naval officers are
quarantined for three days,

[01:07:26.07]
where they are asked to step
outside their disciplines,

[01:07:29.01]
professions and comfort zones

[01:07:31.05]
to explore the societal, geopolitical,

[01:07:34.07]
and ethical implications
of a quantum future.

[01:07:41.04]
But then came the great interruptions.

[01:07:44.00]
First the horrific bush fires,
then the pandemic.

[01:07:47.08]
The emergency of climate change

[01:07:49.01]
and the exponential
spread of the coronavirus

[01:07:52.01]
was a wake-up call for us and many others.

[01:07:55.03]
As the Q Station itself became endangered

[01:07:57.09]
by smoke, fire, and virus,

[01:08:00.03]
its history returned with a vengeance.

[01:08:03.02]
Long before the quarantine
station was established

[01:08:05.08]
on the north head of Sydney
Harbor in the early 1830s,

[01:08:09.02]
the site was an important place

[01:08:10.07]
of ceremonial and teaching practices

[01:08:13.07]
as well as burial grounds for
the Indigenous of the area,

[01:08:17.00]
the Gadigal peoples of the Eora Nation.

[01:08:21.01]
In the first pandemic
recorded in Australia,

[01:08:23.04]
at least 50% of the Gadigal
population were wiped out

[01:08:26.07]
by the European smallpox virus in 1789.

[01:08:30.08]
The Native burial grounds
would be displaced

[01:08:33.02]
by those who came later

[01:08:34.06]
and died while in
quarantine from influenza.

[01:08:37.08]
The history of first
encounters between strangers

[01:08:40.08]
and strange diseases would
be repeated many times

[01:08:43.09]
in many places, and serve
as an important reminder

[01:08:47.00]
that climate emergencies and
pandemics are human tragedies

[01:08:50.07]
in which everyone is at risk,
but not equally so.

[01:08:56.01]
[droning didgeridoo music]

[01:09:00.02]
- Outside of the harbor, the
Gadigal clan is one of 29

[01:09:06.03]
that makes up the Eora Nation.

[01:09:08.09]
- Political, economic, racial, gendered

[01:09:11.02]
and other demographic factors mitigate

[01:09:13.07]
as well as elevate risk,
and fear factors divide

[01:09:16.08]
as well as unite peoples around the world.

[01:09:19.07]
At the most basic level of life and death,

[01:09:22.00]
climate emergencies and pandemics are

[01:09:24.05]
issues of human security,

[01:09:28.08]
first characterized in the
1990s by the United Nations as

[01:09:32.06]
"A child who did not die,

[01:09:34.05]
"a disease that did not
spread, a job that was not cut,

[01:09:37.07]
"an ethnic tension that did
not explode in violence,

[01:09:40.08]
"a dissident who was not silenced."

[01:09:47.00]
If the question of security is ultimately

[01:09:49.00]
about what makes us safe,
then the climate emergency

[01:09:51.09]
and COVID pandemic threw
into high relief the failure

[01:09:55.02]
of political regimes to keep us safe.

[01:09:57.08]
In too many instances,
decisions were made,

[01:10:00.03]
or more frequently not made,

[01:10:02.04]
by regimes at the national as
well as international level,

[01:10:05.07]
often making matters much worse
before making them better.

[01:10:09.06]
And yet, if there was
a light that showed up

[01:10:11.05]
through the cracks, it came from science.

[01:10:14.08]
Playing catch up and not
always getting it right,

[01:10:17.01]
contested by partisan politics,

[01:10:19.07]
science provided the
knowledge and technology

[01:10:22.04]
to slow, if not stop, climate change,

[01:10:25.02]
and to slow, if not stop, the spread

[01:10:27.03]
and to begin the cure
for the COVID pandemic.

[01:10:31.09]
The Project Q response was
to mobilize the metaphysics,

[01:10:34.07]
heuristics and aesthetics
of quantum mechanics

[01:10:37.04]
to better comprehend and communicate

[01:10:39.05]
how nothing so small as a photon of light

[01:10:42.03]
or strand of viral RNA

[01:10:43.09]
could have such profound global effects.

[01:10:47.01]
As Sydney went into a second
COVID lockdown, we staged Q6.

[01:10:51.02]
With a little help from Zoom

[01:10:52.07]
as a non-localized superpositioned event,

[01:10:55.06]
and using networked media,

[01:10:57.02]
we traveled from Sydney to Q
Station to a global audience.

[01:11:08.04]
Before we go down that
quantum rabbit hole,

[01:11:11.04]
I'd like to start with a quote.

[01:11:14.02]
Yogi Berra said, "The future
ain't what it used to be."

[01:11:18.09]
- Well, it's like he also said,

[01:11:21.09]
"Nobody goes there
anymore. It's too crowded."

[01:11:25.09]
I...

[01:11:28.09]
I think the pandemic is part of this,

[01:11:32.05]
but it's the last slap in the face

[01:11:35.05]
of a process that began
a couple of decades ago.

[01:11:40.03]
Maybe it's a structure of
feeling that is 21st century,

[01:11:44.04]
that history is accelerated,

[01:11:46.05]
that new things are happening faster

[01:11:48.05]
than they can be assimilated

[01:11:51.02]
and put into a coherent
picture in one's mind.

[01:11:54.03]
And then the pandemic made it all real.

[01:11:56.03]
Like, everybody had to change their lives

[01:11:58.05]
and you had to at that
point think to yourself,

[01:12:01.09]
"It really is a global culture."

[01:12:03.08]
I really could go down to a grocery store

[01:12:06.06]
that would be empty not
just of its toilet paper,

[01:12:09.00]
but its food.

[01:12:09.09]
And I'm utterly reliant on a global system

[01:12:13.04]
for my own personal life

[01:12:14.08]
that would be changed by global events.

[01:12:17.07]
The future is a potentiality,
a potential state.

[01:12:21.02]
And no, we can't know which
one thing is going to happen

[01:12:25.06]
until it has.

[01:12:26.06]
So when people think of science fiction

[01:12:28.07]
as predicting the future,

[01:12:30.07]
that would be a sad thing
to try to put on yourself,

[01:12:34.02]
'cause you can't do it
and it would be pointless.

[01:12:37.00]
And in fact, there are
people who talk about,

[01:12:39.01]
this is quantum again, the
Pauli exclusion principle.

[01:12:42.04]
If you write down a future,

[01:12:44.03]
it's certain that that
one will not come to pass

[01:12:47.08]
because the real future in any
earlier prediction would be

[01:12:51.00]
occupying the same space.

[01:12:54.02]
- This quote comes from the
Defense Sciences Office manager.

[01:12:58.04]
I just want your reaction,

[01:12:59.06]
because there's so many different ways

[01:13:01.01]
you can respond to this.

[01:13:02.09]
"Quantum computers could be transformative

[01:13:05.08]
"and the most important
technology we've ever seen,

[01:13:08.01]
"or they can be totally useless

[01:13:10.00]
"and these gigantic paperweights

[01:13:11.05]
"that are sitting in
labs across the country.

[01:13:14.05]
"That window of potential
surprise is the key.

[01:13:18.01]
"That's the kind of surprise

[01:13:19.03]
"that DARPA cannot allow to exist.

[01:13:21.07]
"It's our job to make sure

[01:13:22.08]
"that we eliminate those
kinds of surprises."

[01:13:28.07]
- You know, my reaction to
that quotation is firstly, wow,

[01:13:33.06]
isn't that brave to make that
kind of statement up front?

[01:13:37.06]
It does show that more innovative
sense of entrepreneurship

[01:13:41.07]
in research now that you
see inside government,

[01:13:44.01]
which is, "We are gonna do this work

[01:13:46.04]
"and it might well fail and
show that there's no result,

[01:13:49.05]
"but we need to understand
that there's no result

[01:13:51.09]
"'cause that will be
useful in and of itself."

[01:13:53.06]
And that's what we do know
about quantum technology,

[01:13:56.07]
because in government it's
inherently tricky making policy

[01:14:01.01]
around tech because so frequently
we're playing catch-up.

[01:14:05.06]
- One of many concerns I have
about that kind of statement

[01:14:08.05]
is it's really playing an
old political game of saying,

[01:14:13.03]
"Trust us," and expecting
the trust to flow

[01:14:15.08]
on the basis of sheer investment,

[01:14:19.05]
the magnitude of investment.

[01:14:21.00]
And I think we know from many, many

[01:14:23.02]
periods throughout history, but recently,

[01:14:25.04]
that you can't kind of
reverse engineer trust.

[01:14:28.04]
You can't just say, if it doesn't flow,

[01:14:30.02]
you can't go back and put it back in.

[01:14:32.03]
I think that's what we're finding

[01:14:33.03]
with a lot of technologies now,
that there's a fixation on,

[01:14:35.07]
"Oh, trust, trust, trust."

[01:14:36.09]
If you just obey the people on top,

[01:14:39.04]
you know, they'll have your back,

[01:14:40.08]
they'll make your future secure.

[01:14:42.04]
And I don't think people, I
don't think that works anymore.

[01:14:45.03]
- It's refreshing to hear,

[01:14:47.02]
in the context of a lot of
quantum hype around the world

[01:14:52.08]
that we've all experienced
certainly in the last few years,

[01:14:57.04]
to remind us that it's
still very early stages.

[01:15:01.02]
If there's actually a fundamental reason

[01:15:02.07]
that that thing's a paperweight,

[01:15:04.05]
then that's an even more
interesting scientific discovery

[01:15:07.06]
in building a universal quantum computer,

[01:15:10.00]
because that tells us there's
something about physics

[01:15:11.07]
that we don't, that quantum
mechanics doesn't explain.

[01:15:14.06]
And that means the best
theory we've got isn't,

[01:15:17.05]
we don't understand it right, so.

[01:15:19.09]
- I think what's interesting here is

[01:15:21.07]
that we are very much
working between the values

[01:15:24.08]
of the practical and the symbolic.

[01:15:26.05]
And there is enormous
symbolic power in quantum

[01:15:29.04]
regardless of whether it
actually does anything

[01:15:31.09]
at the practical level or not.

[01:15:33.08]
So when we see these types
of statements being produced

[01:15:38.03]
at the same time as large bags
of cash are being delivered,

[01:15:42.00]
I tend to see that more
as what is happening

[01:15:44.07]
in the geopolitical context
and what are the claims

[01:15:47.05]
to particular types of supremacy there,

[01:15:50.01]
rather than purely looking at it

[01:15:52.00]
from the perspective of
science and technology.

[01:15:54.00]
They are intertwined of course,

[01:15:55.08]
but I think we do need to look at this

[01:15:57.04]
in the context of the realpolitik

[01:15:59.07]
of what is happening at
the moment more broadly

[01:16:02.00]
in terms of the US's positioning.

[01:16:04.05]
And this is something that
DARPA has done for a long time.

[01:16:08.07]
- Quantum technologies come
with a plethora of applications

[01:16:12.02]
that could accelerate
our progress in solving

[01:16:14.06]
some of the most important
challenges of our times.

[01:16:18.02]
Quantum encryption can
secure communication.

[01:16:21.04]
Privacy can actually now be a reality.

[01:16:24.09]
Quantum simulations can help
us discover new materials,

[01:16:28.02]
new solutions, new technologies

[01:16:30.04]
that could help us in our
response to climate change,

[01:16:33.00]
that could help us create
the right development models

[01:16:36.06]
to create sustainable growth.

[01:16:39.00]
Quantum sensing could help
us predict weather patterns

[01:16:42.03]
and help us in our negotiating the extreme

[01:16:45.09]
and sometimes surprising
weather developments

[01:16:49.01]
that can create terrible outcomes.

[01:16:52.01]
India is looking at this
sector with keen interest

[01:16:55.08]
and is in fact, as a country,
investing in the future.

[01:16:59.05]
The most important would of course be,

[01:17:01.02]
will quantum compound
the ethical issues of AI?

[01:17:04.08]
We have seen artificial
intelligence and machine learning

[01:17:09.08]
creating certain unintended consequences.

[01:17:15.03]
- We are in the middle of, I think,

[01:17:16.07]
a perfect and intertwined
storm of a global pandemic,

[01:17:21.09]
unprecedented technological
development and disruption

[01:17:26.04]
and increased connectivity
all coming to the fore

[01:17:29.04]
at much the same time.

[01:17:31.05]
And so governments have to
grapple with these issues.

[01:17:34.01]
For us, it's about ensuring
that technology upholds

[01:17:36.08]
and protects liberal democratic values,

[01:17:39.06]
that it shapes and
builds secure, resilient

[01:17:42.02]
and trusted technologies,

[01:17:45.03]
and it fosters sustainable
economic growth and development.

[01:17:48.09]
- To me, a bigger aspect,

[01:17:50.06]
especially from an ethical
perspective, is quantum divide,

[01:17:54.01]
the gap between those who can

[01:17:56.01]
and are able to benefit from
the quantum technologies

[01:17:59.01]
and those who are not.

[01:18:01.02]
Narrowing down or closing
the quantum divide

[01:18:03.09]
will need to include efforts at quantum

[01:18:06.03]
and other emerging technologies

[01:18:08.04]
such as artificial intelligence, robotics,

[01:18:11.00]
how they can help societies,

[01:18:12.08]
and how this access can
be made to larger sections

[01:18:16.03]
of the global society.

[01:18:18.03]
Just to mention a few, a
gender divide, for instance,

[01:18:21.09]
a class divide between rich and poor,

[01:18:24.00]
or a geographical divide
between urban and rural.

[01:18:27.07]
Ethics will guide us to
ask some basic questions,

[01:18:30.02]
like what are the values that are guiding

[01:18:32.06]
the current quantum drive?

[01:18:34.02]
What choices do we have?

[01:18:36.07]
- How the shift from
linear to quantum causality

[01:18:40.08]
will require a fundamental rejig

[01:18:43.01]
in how we think about power,
ethics, and decision making,

[01:18:46.05]
and this unfortunately is
where parallels really fail us.

[01:18:51.01]
How would we, for example,

[01:18:53.04]
code accountability into a technology

[01:18:55.05]
where cause-and-effect
may be indeterminate

[01:18:57.07]
or where the act of observation
may change the outcome,

[01:19:01.05]
or where explainability and reconstruction

[01:19:04.02]
of how a decision is
made may be impossible?

[01:19:07.08]
Perhaps because quantum is going to be

[01:19:11.02]
so paradigm-shifting and world-changing,

[01:19:13.00]
that country should make a
fresh set of calculations

[01:19:15.05]
on how they pursue their
technology partnerships

[01:19:18.00]
in this area.

[01:19:21.05]
- Hello, I am Refik Anadol.

[01:19:23.04]
I'm a media artist and
director joining you

[01:19:26.01]
from Los Angeles, California.

[01:19:30.05]
I would like to share today
our recent collaboration

[01:19:34.02]
and one of the most inspiring
project in my journey

[01:19:37.04]
as an artist, "Quantum Memories."

[01:19:40.09]
The project is both inspired
by, and a speculation of,

[01:19:45.09]
the Many-Worlds Interpretation
in quantum physics,

[01:19:49.00]
a theory that holds that
there are many parallel worlds

[01:19:52.06]
that exist at the same
space and time as our own.

[01:19:57.05]
Tapping into the random
fluctuations of quantum noise

[01:20:01.05]
as a unique realm of
possibilities and predictions,

[01:20:05.03]
"Quantum Memories" provides

[01:20:07.05]
an interactive aesthetic experience

[01:20:10.03]
by tracking the audience's
movements in real time

[01:20:14.09]
and simulating how
their observer positions

[01:20:18.07]
indeed become entangled

[01:20:21.03]
with the visible outcomes of
the ever-changing artwork.

[01:20:26.09]
[ethereal ambient music]

[01:20:36.00]
- For me, it was seeing, like,

[01:20:38.02]
also how musical thinking went into

[01:20:42.02]
the actual discovery of quantum mechanics.

[01:20:46.05]
There was a philosophical,
you know, stuff.

[01:20:48.06]
There was mathematical,
von Neumann and Pauli

[01:20:51.07]
and all those cats.

[01:20:53.03]
But then there was de Broglie,
the French prince,

[01:20:56.00]
who was a violinist who, you know,

[01:20:58.09]
discovered de Broglie waves.

[01:21:00.06]
The association of matter and waves

[01:21:04.02]
came from his experience as a violinist.

[01:21:08.07]
I haven't touched my
horn in about two months,

[01:21:10.03]
but what I'll do is
just make something up,

[01:21:13.03]
try to do something Bach-ish in the--

[01:21:16.03]
I don't know, we'll see what happens.

[01:21:18.08]
[improvisational saxophone music]

[01:21:39.00]
- I think historically by
the end of the 19th century,

[01:21:42.01]
you know, scientists were pretty
sure that physics was over,

[01:21:45.08]
that they had figured
everything out, right?

[01:21:48.00]
And then, oops, here comes the quantum

[01:21:49.06]
and everything's not figured out.

[01:21:52.09]
So people like Heisenberg and Bohr

[01:21:58.06]
and certainly Pauli all looked, yeah,

[01:22:03.02]
they all turned to Hindu
thought, Buddhist thought,

[01:22:07.05]
Platonic thought as the
places in human experience

[01:22:12.03]
where the quantum scales up.

[01:22:14.08]
One of the sayings in
the physics world was,

[01:22:18.07]
"Shut up and calculate."

[01:22:22.01]
You know, in other
words, don't think about

[01:22:24.03]
the philosophical implications
of quantum mechanics.

[01:22:27.09]
Just do the damn math.

[01:22:30.01]
Just do something useful.

[01:22:31.06]
Well, that's what gets
you the bomb, you know?

[01:22:34.06]
Of course that gets us cell phones

[01:22:36.00]
and gets us all kinds of other things,

[01:22:38.00]
but that's dangerous.

[01:22:41.08]
[pensive ambient music]

[01:23:24.00]
- [James] The quantum
revolution that began

[01:23:25.08]
at the Solvay Conference
in 1927 is far from over.

[01:23:30.01]
Not many outside this remarkable
circle fully understood

[01:23:33.06]
just how radically quantum
mechanics would change the world.

[01:23:37.06]
One notable exception was
William Bennett Munro,

[01:23:40.06]
who used his 1927 presidential address

[01:23:43.05]
to alert the American
Political Science Association,

[01:23:46.08]
"It has been said that no
metaphysical implications

[01:23:50.01]
"are necessarily involved
in the quantum theory

[01:23:52.08]
"or in the doctrine of relativity,

[01:23:54.08]
"but it is difficult to believe
that this can be the case.

[01:23:58.00]
"A revolution so amazing in our ideas

[01:24:00.06]
"concerning the physical
world must inevitably carry

[01:24:03.07]
"its echoes into other
fields of human knowledge.

[01:24:06.07]
"New truths cannot be quarantined."

[01:24:09.09]
Rather than echo, a
deafening silence followed.

[01:24:13.05]
The silence cannot continue

[01:24:16.02]
as we face new quantum breakthroughs
that rival the creation

[01:24:19.04]
of the atomic bomb and the nuclear age,

[01:24:22.00]
the invention of the microprocessor
and the information age.

[01:24:29.04]
[upbeat electronic music]

[01:24:34.07]
When new technologies of
quantum computing, communication

[01:24:37.07]
and artificial intelligence
emerge from university labs,

[01:24:40.05]
big tech companies, and
national security agencies...

[01:24:43.07]
- [Speaker] Not just in Australia,
but all around the world.

[01:24:46.08]
- [James] When we awake to Q-Day,

[01:24:48.09]
the moment when all classically
encrypted information

[01:24:51.09]
is to be rendered visible

[01:24:53.03]
by quantum computers and algorithms,

[01:24:55.09]
what lessons then will we have learned

[01:24:58.00]
from past quantum revolutions?

[01:25:02.07]
We know from Albert
Einstein's famous lament

[01:25:06.08]
and Robert Oppenheimer's deep regret

[01:25:09.07]
how the first quantum
revolution changed everything

[01:25:12.07]
except our ways of thinking.

[01:25:21.03]
In the highest and possibly the last stage

[01:25:24.00]
of the second quantum revolution,

[01:25:25.08]
we seem unable to
comprehend, let alone manage,

[01:25:28.09]
the dangers of generative
artificial intelligence.

[01:25:33.01]
Now, as we face a third
quantum revolution,

[01:25:35.09]
we need to become fluent
in what Armen Sarkissian,

[01:25:39.07]
the former president of Armenia
and a theoretical physicist,

[01:25:43.02]
called "quantum politics."

[01:25:44.09]
- We are seeing a lot of
uncertainty, unpredictability,

[01:25:48.02]
and we have a complete discomfort

[01:25:50.02]
like scientists 100 years ago

[01:25:51.08]
when they couldn't
explain classical events.

[01:25:55.07]
So, welcome to the new world.

[01:25:57.07]
Welcome to the quantum world.

[01:26:04.03]
- [James] We need to revive
the internationalist spirit

[01:26:07.02]
of the Solvay Conference

[01:26:08.05]
to break out of antagonistic rivalries

[01:26:11.06]
and to free ourselves from
the disciplinary silos

[01:26:14.05]
that keep physicists and philosophers,

[01:26:16.08]
politicians and entrepreneurs,
humanists and artists

[01:26:20.08]
from talking, learning and
working with each other.

[01:26:24.04]
But we also need to
recognize the opportunity

[01:26:27.03]
as well as responsibility

[01:26:28.09]
that comes with a singular convergence

[01:26:30.08]
of quantum theory,
science, and technology.

[01:26:34.05]
Each of us increasingly
entangled, superpositioned,

[01:26:38.00]
and facing conditions
of radical uncertainty

[01:26:40.03]
in a third quantum revolution,

[01:26:42.06]
have the potential to create new realities

[01:26:45.03]
with every measurement, every
observation, every decision.

[01:26:51.03]
In other words, and in one
of many possible worlds,

[01:26:55.02]
the future is ours to make.

[01:26:58.00]
[pensive ambient music]

[01:27:28.03]
[ambient music continues]

[01:27:58.04]
[ambient music continues]

[01:28:01.08]