Podcast
Root Causes 380: What If Quantum Supremacy Comes Earlier Than We Thought?


Hosted by
Tim Callan
Chief Compliance Officer
Jason Soroko
Fellow
Original broadcast date
April 23, 2024
Repeat guest Bruno Coulliard gives us an update on the US government's migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). We talk about the challenges to migration, the possibility of a black swan event in achieving quantum supremacy, and what happens if we all respond by pressing the "panic button" at the same time.
Podcast Transcript
Lightly edited for flow and brevity.
And we've seen in the United States there being a, you know, legislation is sometimes very brief, and it says, okay, refer to guidance by NIST. Whatever the latest guidance is, refer to it. And therefore, the legislation doesn't pretend that it can be prescriptive in a legal sense. And I think what the Europeans have done here is taken a different tack and saying, okay, what are the things we're actually worried about and we're going to make legislation around that.
I'll give you one really good example. And then we can get into some of the other nitty-gritties.
Imagine Tim, a country in Europe, who decides, you know what, the law can kind of be codified because it kind of already is code. How about we determine whether a person should be arrested, a policeman should go and arrest them and when they come to court, AI will decide whether they are guilty or whether they are innocent.
You can see that happening. Right?
And the MIT Technology Review, actually has a few good blogs on this that I would recommend people to read. And first draft of the bill actually said that all datasets that go into an AI must be free of errors and humans be able to fully understand how the AI systems work. That's gonna be impossible, right?
Let me just bring up another example, Tim, where I don't know whether this is good or bad but there perhaps might be a ban on emotion recognition AI.
Now, you might think from a standpoint of privacy or, or whatnot, geez, maybe I don't want a computer measuring my emotions. But on the other hand, there are some use cases that some innovators have come up with that are really good. So a blanket ban - I don't know.

