The volume of information that can be processed is growing at an exponential rate and the pressure to make the way we operate in all areas, public and private, sustainable from all points of view, including environmental and social, is increasing. The recent Glasgow Climate Pact could be seen as a source of myriad optimisation problems for IT.
Early adoption of quantum and quantum-inspired algorithms is expected in the financial and pharmaceutical sector over the next three to five years, targeting portfolio optimisation, risk modelling and drug discovery. This will be followed by the aerospace, defence and energy industries (5-10 years), which will benefit from quantum simulations for materials science, fuel efficiency and nuclear fusion.
Few European institutions rank among the world's leading quantum research centres. In the case of universities, centres in Copenhagen, Paris, Munich and Delft stand out, but they are still far behind US institutions such as Caltech, MIT and Harvard, and universities in non-EU countries such as the UK and Switzerland. Public and private funding in the EU also lags behind the US and China.
Fragmentation is replicated in the private sector: instead of large corporations, the EU has mainly start-ups and a few growing companies. Software based on quantum-inspired algorithms is crying out for more attention in this array of national and European efforts. The challenge is to find concrete applications in productive sectors that can improve the efficiency of companies and open the door to new business models.
The possibilities for technological convergence with the new cycle of artificial intelligence (AI) are vast. Researchers from Spain's Multiverse Computing and CounterCraft have developed a new quantum AI model, trained on datasets of real network traffic and system logs, that identifies the 100% of cyberattacks.
In the field of personalised medicine, machine learning based on quantum computing represents a real revolution for sophisticated decision-making in real time. Scientists can create synthetic genetic data very similar to real-world data that could feed quantum algorithms to develop more accurate molecular models, speeding up the entire drug discovery process.
Sustainable cities also have much to gain from the combination of quantum computing and AI. Urban planners could create synthetic traffic data that simulates real-world traffic patterns to train quantum algorithms to improve congestion management and optimise routes.
To realise its full potential in the private sector, as elsewhere, the problem of talent availability will need to be addressed. Of the 60% of technology leaders surveyed by IBM, 60% cited a lack of skilled professionals as the main obstacle.