Google’s Quantum Supremacy – Anyone else feeling underwhelmed?

Nobody messed with Super Gran!

I noticed on the news the other day that there is (yet another) Terminator film out: Dark Fate, where Sarah Connor is back, now looking like a cross-between The Golden Girls meets Super Gran.

…And of course, good old Arnie has come good with his famous promise: “I’ll be back” although perhaps it would be more accurate if it was lengthened to “I’ll be back, but my head will now seem oddly swollen and my hair will be of a very strange texture and colour” …but I guess that doesn’t really slip off the tongue so well.

I’m looking forward to their explanation of how a Terminator has managed to age so much – perhaps they will site some form of rust degradation?

Where Quantum meets AI and becomes ‘self-aware’

Anyway, for those who remember the original series, August 29th was the date that the overarching IT system, Skynet, became ‘self-aware’. Stephen Hawking no less talked about the dangers of what could happen when Quantum Computing became practically useful.

It’s almost become a tradition now, that every six months or so, when IBM announce a breakthrough in their Quantum Computing capabilities, it’s met with excitement and an understandable measure of trepidation. If you’re a bitter old cynic like me, this is followed by a feeling of ‘and???’

Google’s Quantum Supremacy

By way of a change, Google has now come charging on to the Quantum Computing dance-floor. Like a sozzled Uncle at a wedding, they came bowling in – cutting awkward out of time shapes with careless abandon. The main (hip) thrust of their argument was achieving the magic goal of ‘Quantum Supremacy’ (no, I hadn’t heard the term before either). Apparently, QS is where quantum machines can do stuff that normal computers can’t.

On further examination where the achievement was ‘producing a set of truly random numbers’ – which is of literally no use to anyone – you might be forgiven for thinking can’t or just can’t be bothered?

Predictably, it wasn’t long before IBM piped up and stated that this pointless exercise could be undertaken by a classical system and in just 2.5 days, not the 10,000 years as originally postulated by Google.

So just another Quantum claim that turned out to be a bit of a damp squib then?

If you are regular readers of our blog, you may remember where we first introduced our ‘UniDonkey’ as a tonic against all the Unicorn ‘Unhackable’ Technology so beloved of the cyber security vending world.

To be fair, the article isn’t completely dripping in cynicism – we do go on to say:

Sorry if all this sounds a bit cynical, I really don’t mean it to be, all the above examples are a glimpse into a truly exciting and achievable near future, we must forgive our media outlets for being a bit presumptuous with their headlines, their links aren’t going to click themselves after all.”

Won’t someone please think about the users!

The reason though for some of this world-weary cynicism is that as an Information Security company we are forever banging away about the importance of making the users aware, rather than just relying on software-based security solutions. We’ve even gone so far as to create an Information Security Awareness Programme for organisations that we call eRiskology™

You can see more HERE but the basic premise is to Inspire users with on-site workshops that utilises information close to the user’s hearts, then Empower users with cutting edge Information Security & Data Protection eLearning, whilst all the time feeding them a constant drip-feed of webinars, podcasts, videos & infographics to Engage them. Finally, Measure the effectiveness of the programme with regular testing and metrics gathering.

So, whilst we shouldn’t ignore and indeed even get excited about technological advancements let’s not forget about us boring old carbon-based lifeforms.

Otherwise known as people.

Risk Crew