The Next Big Thing After AI Is Here!

The technological world stands at a fascinating inflection point. While generative AI dominates headlines and boardroom discussions, quantum computing quietly advances in laboratories worldwide, promising computational capabilities that will transform how we solve our most complex problems.

TLDR:

• Quantum computers use qubits instead of traditional bits, allowing them to process multiple states simultaneously through superposition
• Entanglement links qubits together, creating computational advantages over classical computers
• Financial services, supply chain, and healthcare sectors stand to benefit immediately from quantum-AI integration
• Current limitations include qubit fragility, temperature requirements (colder than space), and scalability challenges
• Major companies like IBM have invested approximately $150 billion in quantum research
• Business leaders should begin preparing now through leadership buy-in, finding technology partners, and conducting small pilot programs

In this eye-opening conversation, transformation leader Justin explains how quantum computing fundamentally differs from classical computing through the phenomena of superposition and entanglement. 

Rather than processing information as binary bits (1s and 0s), quantum computers use qubits that can represent multiple states simultaneously - essentially exploring all possible solutions to a problem at once. This quantum advantage turns what might take a classical computer millennia to calculate into problems solvable in seconds or minutes.

The business implications are profound. Financial services companies can optimize investment portfolios by running countless market scenarios simultaneously. Supply chain managers can model global disruptions—from shipping delays to tariff changes and identify optimal operational strategies. 

Healthcare researchers can simulate molecular interactions at the atomic level, potentially revolutionizing drug development and personalized medicine.  

For leaders seeking competitive advantage, quantum computing offers unprecedented analytical power. Yet significant challenges remain. Qubits require temperatures colder than outer space to function properly. Current quantum systems operate with relatively few qubits (between 5-150), whereas transformative applications demand many more. 

Perhaps most concerning are the security implications - quantum computers will eventually break current encryption standards, leading to what experts call "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks where bad actors collect encrypted data today, waiting for quantum capabilities to unlock it tomorrow.

Despite these hurdles business leaders should begin preparing now by securing leadership buy-in, finding technology partners, conducting readiness assessments, and planning pilot programs.

Are you ready for the quantum revolution? The companies that understand and harness this technology first will gain extraordinary competitive advantages in an increasingly complex business landscape.

Find more about Justin:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetjustinlewis/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/quantumrhodes
• https://quantumrhodes.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Quantum Computing's Disruptive Potential
• 1:28 Understanding Qubits and Quantum Mechanics
• 5:00 Industries Poised for Quantum Advantage
• 8:24 Overcoming Quantum Computing Challenges
• 11:27 Implementation Strategy for Business Leaders
• 16:18 Security Risks and Ethical Considerations
• 21:39 The Future Quantum-AI Landscape

Transcript

Kieran Gilmurray: 0:00

Whilst many business eyes are focused on generative AI, quantum computing is quietly emerging as the next disruptive force, one that could supercharge AI and unlock solutions to problems that were once unsolvable. Quantum computing and AI are coming together to solve problems, not just today's, but technology problems that should be solved by tomorrow. For business leaders, this means faster insights, smarter decisions and real competitive edge. Welcome, my name is Kieran and I'm a globally recognized authority on AI automation and digital transformation. My extensive corporate background and deep practitioner insights offer the business world's a trusted advisor for today's uncertain companies. Today's guest is a US Navy veteran and seasoned transformation leader with deep expertise in AI-driven operational strategy. With a background at Gartner and PwC and MBA in strategy and a track record of delivering measurable ROI for private equity firms, he helps businesses cut through complexity, reduce tech sprawl and unlock real value through intelligent automation welcome, Justin.

Justin Lewis: 1:13

Yes, thank you so much, kieran.

Kieran Gilmurray: 1:15

You're really excited to be on today yeah, it'll be a lot of fun, a lot of fun. So here, jump in, let's give this audience what they want. What is quantum computing, and how is it different from the computers we use every day?

Justin Lewis: 1:28

yes, I, I feel like there has been a microscopic lens into quantum computing as of late, of course, the emergence of ai and now the emergence of quantum, you know, one can start to wonder what exactly it is. So let's, let's give some clarification to that. It's something that fundamentally redefines computational limits. So you can think about this technology. It's something that can supercharge AI by unlocking solutions to solve very, very complex business problems. It operates on the principles of quantum mechanics. So you can think about this as transforming how we process information at the levels down to neutrons, photons, electrons. The difference now, right, you know, you can think about the difference when it comes to classical computers, because they utilize bits, bits of information represented by ones and zeros, on and off, if you will. Quantum computers, however, they leverage qubits. So these are things that operate in ones and zeros, but they can operate and exhibit superposition by representing one and zero at the same time. So so I just said superposition, so let's go ahead and clarify and define that as well. So we'll dive into superposition, which is a phenomena of quantum mechanics, and then we'll also dive into entanglement briefly, which is also another phenomenon. So superposition it allows for qubits to embody multiple, multiple states simultaneously, right. So you know the capacity of them being able to do that. It expands the information density, or the ability to store massive amounts of information and ultimately process that information. Right. So when you think about a processor in this way, it can concurrently explore all the possible solutions to solve a problem, much like if you were in a maze You're at the starting point and every time you run into a roadblock you have to go over again. That's the way that classical computers solve it. But let's just say there were 1, thousand of you, or 10,000 of you, you could explore all aspects of that maze simultaneously and the one that reaches the end, you know, maybe it takes, of course, you individually five minutes to explore a wrong answer or wrong pathway. Through superposition you can find the answer, let's just say, in a span of three seconds, right, comparatively.

Justin Lewis: 4:08

So that next concept is entanglement. So it links qubits. So once qubits are interacting with one another, they become correlated. So regardless of their physical separation, if they're separated by a nanometer or literally a meter, they can be represented in the same state, either that one or that zero. So these types of entanglements or intertwined calculations, it allows for computational advantage over classical machines.

Justin Lewis: 4:42

So it's something that business leaders can embrace, especially right now, because it's a fundamental shift and it offers the ability to solve extremely difficult problems to orders of magnitude faster. Just like I said that maze example five minutes versus three seconds. Same thing, if you're a business leader that is going through logistic changes or transformation, or workforce scheduling for 300,000 employees or optimal pathway for advancement from a human capital and professional development standpoint, these are problems that you can solve almost instantaneously with these types of computers. So that's a little bit in terms of the differences, but you know, as I think about this going forward, rolling this out, the governance has to be robust, the cybersecurity aspects have to be robust, and then, when you think about your current investments or investments going forward, you know it's something that you have to put a keen set of eyes on, just so that you're executing this in the right way.

Kieran Gilmurray: 5:49

So if we do invest in that, then because it sounds exciting and if it can solve really complex problems really quickly to get us to great answers, then which are the businesses that are going to benefit first from this combination of quantum computing and AI?

Justin Lewis: 6:10

Yeah, absolutely. You know it's breakthrough technology, so you know, when you think about the difficult problems that typical companies have to solve, you know you can think about supply chain issues or financial services, or even, of course, in medicine and healthcare and drug development. So in some of those examples for example, portfolio optimization so which stock is going to perform much better given a set of criteria, or internal versus external factors, or other market players in the industry investing heavily in that same asset, or potentially shorting that same asset you can run a lot of those scenarios and then project and see what your potential outcomes are for that portfolio. Same thing for supply chain. Of course.

Justin Lewis: 6:56

There's been a wave of disruption in the last few years when it comes to supply chain, even in current present day tariffs, of course, big shipping containers being stuck in canals and passageways, so it caused a wave of disruption. So you can factor all of those scenarios in through a quantum computer and then have it execute on the most optimal way to go about executing our operations going forward. And same thing when it comes to drug discovery, because quantum computing is based on quantum mechanics operating at the electron, neutron, atom level. You know you can obviously think about materials engineering and then also drug development, even down to the different ways that humans are composed or have predisposition to health care issues, right. So you can run those scenarios and then get to, I would imagine, the future state of this having drugs that are extremely personalized to the unique makeup of a particular person Great advantages. So those are some of the industries that can benefit immediately from this type of technology.

Kieran Gilmurray: 8:15

So you've got me excited then. So what are the biggest obstacles stopping quantum computing from being more widely adopted right now?

Justin Lewis: 8:24

Yeah, there's a lot of limitations. You know, at the base level this technology, it operates with qubits. Qubits are in their natural state, if you will, they have to be extremely cold, right, to be extremely cold. Right. So the uh, I forget exactly the degree, but the degree that you have to hold in terms of their temperature, it has to be at either zero kelvin or sub-zero kelvin, right, you know extremely cold temperatures, much colder than uh space itself, right? So that's something that requires, of course, a lot of energy, and in order for them to operate optimally, they have to maintain that temperature, right? So they can become extremely instable when they're exposed to external energies interacting with it.

Justin Lewis: 9:21

So any aspect of heat or movement or waves, radio waves or electronic waves, it might cause disruption in how they operate.

Justin Lewis: 9:30

And then, of course, if they're operating with your computations or your problems that you're allowing to try and solve, the outcomes or outputs may cause errors as well. You know, that's uh, that's one one thing, the qubit fragility aspect, uh, but then you know the scalability aspect of this too. So, as of right now, there are major entities out there, like ibm and d-wave and rickety, major players in the quantum space, and they are operating with five, ten, 10, 100, potentially around 150 qubits as of right now on some of their chips. So being able to solve extremely transformative problems and apply these types of technology to transformative applications is a massive undertaking and it's going to require a lot more qubits than is presently available today. So those are a couple of things I would say that are causing some limitations, but it's new technology, it's evolving and, at the end of the day, companies have to be sure of how they want to try and implement these types of technologies. So that's another area as well. So education, implementation, figuring out what types of problems that these types of technologies can solve.

Kieran Gilmurray: 10:52

Is there a perfect or a better timing to this, and is there a plan companies should be adopting to get ready now, or is this numbers a year's time away?

Justin Lewis: 11:02

I mean quite honestly. I know there's leaders out there that have said, you know, it's 15 to 30 years away. I, in my own opinion, I think it's much closer than that, just because of you know the the advancements and changes even from five to ten years ago, ai Quantum was not really in the limelight, right, there were a few major players that were interested in the space. But you can think about five years ago what we were focused on big data analytics to now machine learning, ai, quantum computing I think another advance us advancing another five, 10 years. Quite honestly, I think there'll be quantum computers that are orders of magnitude much faster than what's presently available. And then the roadmaps and playbooks that a lot of companies, for example, like IBM, they've invested about $150 billion over a particular time span to make sure that they get this right With those types of investments. And then the wave of quantum campuses that are also popping up in Boston and Chicago and many other places in the nation DC area as well. You know, I think these advancements are going to, you know, be much closer to present day than, let's just say, 15 or 30 years from now. As far as you, far as how leaders should be thinking about this quite honestly. In the same way that AI has taken the world by storm, teams by storm and has kind of left business leaders struggling to figure out how they're going to implement this, I think it's going to be the same thing with quantum. So recognition and leadership buy-in for one, recognizing that this is important, getting buy-in and education.

Justin Lewis: 12:48

Second thing is finding a trusted technology partner, so an entity or person or team of people that are experts in this space or early adopters in this space and are willing to pair up with them to drive this forward. And then the last few things you know driving forward in terms of strategic readiness assessments, understanding the landscape of investments you can't forget about governance and security, of course. You know it's something that can potentially cause problems. I assume we will be able to dig into that a little bit more as well today. And then understanding the deep business impact, human capital, workforce, applications. And then, before you pilot and test and do a lot of massive enterprise investment and rollout, you've got to make sure that you're capturing the accurate data points on a local, small pilot phase or regional model before any sort of enterprise or global rollout. So you know. After that, you just got to make sure change management, monitoring and continuous improvement is a part of your plan as well.

Kieran Gilmurray: 13:55

Is it hard to find people who understand quantum computing and AI today, and should companies start finding those people now? Invest, invest, or should they wait until the technology is more mature to get that? I'm assuming unicorn it's a.

Justin Lewis: 14:11

I feel like it's the age-old question. With every advancement in technology, we have to try and figure out who we have on board that knows about that. That technology or you know, it's previously undocumented interest within your workforce or areas, pockets of excellence that live there. And if that talent isn't in your organization, you know you have to figure out how to get it in, educate it in, hire it in Maybe it's gig workers or contractors, maybe for a defined set of time, but ultimately you want to make sure that that expertise lives in-house. It should be a high priority.

Justin Lewis: 14:51

But as we think about this, the pairing of quantum and AI maybe we can just call it right now quantum AI. You know it can be extremely niche. So you have potentially researchers, professors, budding experts that live at universities, if you will, for a period of time, academic experts. Let's just see if we can have those quantum computing experts that have elements of interest in AI to adapt these types of technologies to present-day problems within AI as well. So you know it can become extremely neat. You have AI experts, you have quantum experts. If we pair those two together, the percentage of people that have that expertise decreases, right.

Justin Lewis: 15:38

So it's important to either find them, the people that have one or the other area of expertise and an interest in the other or find a way that you can build a pipeline internally or some sort of relationship with the powerhouses that are out there in terms of universities that have expertise disciplines on their campuses and then build a corporate slash education pipeline so you can have a stable amount of people that are interested in your firm, or just you're running projects and programs and research at those universities so you can naturally build interests and a pathway into their organizations.

Kieran Gilmurray: 16:22

We've talked, justin, about the benefits. Like, I'm assuming, most technologies, there's risks. So, technically, I read a lot about, you know, quantum's ability to break Bitcoin, quantum's ability to break encrypted systems. Are there new security risks coming that were introduced by quantum systems? Are there ethical issues we should be thinking about now and preparing for before the technology becomes widespread?

Justin Lewis: 16:51

Absolutely. I think this is probably one of the most important pieces of this technology. It does present an imminent threat, you know, especially to those highly regulated industries that are out there. So of course, we can think about health care. Of course, you know when it as it relates to personal health information, financial information as well. So you have the rise of crypto investments on blockchain and you know a lot of these investments, of course, or accounts or things that happen as currencies in transit. It's locked down because of the current technology that we have as it relates to cryptography, but those things are based on certain cryptography standards, so we'll give a little bit of imagery to this. So there are some problems, of course, that classical computers leveraging those cryptography standards. They can take an extremely long time to break. So let's just say 50,000 years, probably at the smallest time frame. As of right now, some of these things may take upwards of 500,000, a million, 10 million years to crack or break or solve, if you will if they're bad actors.

Justin Lewis: 18:14

Obviously, the emergence of quantum computing can solve or break some of these encryption keys in a span of five minutes or five seconds, depending on the character length, or whatever it might be Right. So you can think about this, right? You have global exchanges. You have indices, of course, that are running nearly 23, 24 hours a day. You know London Exchange, new York Stock Exchange, chicago Mercantile Exchange, like all of these entities that process information, all at nearly light speed, as of right now. That process information at nearly light speed, as of right now, right, but as we think about bad actors emerging leveraging this type of technology, and most of the time, bad actors are much quicker to collaborate than the people that are trying to protect the information. So, again, if we have investments going out from major companies, but they're not willing to collaborate to make sure that ultimately, either these exchanges or transactions are safe, but bad actors are leveraging the same technology and willing to collaborate much faster, uh, in order to, you know, solve problem, solve their problems, which is breaking into things is going to present some problems. So one thing that happened recently you know 16 billion I think it was 16 billion passwords cracked. It was Apple phones, android phones. So in my opinion, some of these things are happening in government agencies in the US as well, right? So when we have all these things happening, we may not see the effects immediately PII being stolen, social security numbers being stolen, passwords being cracked and hacked A lot of these things. Unfortunately, they're bad actors holding onto this information. So harvest now, decrypt later, is happening.

Justin Lewis: 20:14

So once quantum computing starts to come online, now we can bad actors can green light just information that they've been holding on to for a month, two months, five years and, you know, immediately break into whatever it is that they want to gain access to.

Justin Lewis: 20:32

So I mean, quite honestly, it's something that is extremely scary from a personal standpoint, but obviously from an enterprise standpoint as well. Companies have to be willing to invest in post-quantum cryptography. So organizations in the US like NIST, national Institute of Standards and Technology they have some new cryptographic algorithms that they're designing, of course, to resist both classical and quantum attacks. But you know, when we think about this going forward, there has to be those security protocols and technology that are put in place. Alongside. You know, of course, some of those governance and ethical considerations as well. So I know I said a lot there, but that's a huge problem that is emerging and it has the potential ability to disrupt operations as they're happening today and, from an ethical standpoint. If there is data that is incorrectly influenced or hacked into and it is data that is trained into AI models, of course it can have the opportunity to continue to disrupt or accelerate speeds of disruption when it comes to inequities that persist in today's age.

Kieran Gilmurray: 21:54

Gosh, a big answer, but a big topic, I think as well, so apologies for that. It was a really great answer. What progress do you expect to see in the next, say, three to five years? Are there any breakthrough or aha moments or announcements that I should be looking out for to know right, run hard and invest deep, because this has arrived.

Justin Lewis: 22:14

You know I think I'm a little biased, but I'll give my unbiased opinion and answer as well. So you know Quantum Roads, we are an IBM Silver business partner and we specialize in AI workflow automation. But you know, with the advancements right now, we're aiming to have our clients scale into quantum efforts in the future, right? So, giving them a great baseline now in order to set them in a great position in the future as it relates to this type of technology. You know. So, alongside that, of course, I mentioned before that heavy investment by IBM $150 billion.

Justin Lewis: 22:53

But you see a lot of nation states investing heavily as well, of course the US, germany, china, making a lot of advancements and investments in this space. And you know, quite honestly, there is a quantum race, right? Quantum supremacy is something that, of course, is floating around nowadays. So you know it presents challenges depending on what nation states priorities are, enterprises priorities are. You want to make sure that you're able to have some sort of advantage, of course, when it comes to this technology. So you know, when I think about what's happening nowadays, of course it's exciting. So you know, when I think about what's happening nowadays, of course it's exciting from a from a perspective of wanting to make sure that this type of technology is used in the best way.

Justin Lewis: 23:44

I'm very optimistic that, you know, enterprises, willighetti, d-wave, um continuum, of course, ibm, uh, of course, the major major players that are out there are also making investments, like amazon, aws, uh, google and microsoft.

Justin Lewis: 23:59

So a lot of major players, a lot of major investment, right? So it, um, it's, it has the potential to, you know, be a very great situation if these people and these companies make sure that they collaborate in the best way to get ahead of, uh, bad actors that will most certainly emerge and are, quite honestly, are, if you will, lurking in the shadows, um, with utilizing this technology. So, you know, at the maturation of all of this, I think there is obviously a quantum and classical hybrid model, right? So? Classical algorithms working alongside quantum computers to help solve problems and the problems that they can't solve, pass it off to the quantum computer and then, once it's solved, in a span of three seconds or five minutes or whatever, what have you? Passing that output back to the classical computer to run there, right? So, quite honestly, I don't think there's going to be a lot of replacement, as of right now, of quantum over classical.

Justin Lewis: 25:08

But, I think they will start to, of course, collaborate, work seamlessly and integrate seamlessly in order to tackle some real-world problems and then, hopefully, the advancements of quantum computing will start to take care of those faults or those issues, of course, when it comes to the fragility of qubits. So it's something that's very exciting. I'm optimistic, I'm really optimistic about some of the use cases and industries that can take advantage of this, like healthcare and financial services, and then, obviously, supply chain. But it's something that I think is going to emerge most certainly in the next five years or so, into 2030.

Kieran Gilmurray: 25:53

Gosh. So we live in exciting times. I thought AI and agentic AI and generative AI was exciting, but this feeling that if we can get quantum computing working, it feels like we can solve lots of society's problems. It also feels a little bit just, there are risks there, you know. So bad actors do get hold of this and, as you mentioned, they are harvesting already and, let's be honest, people don't change their passwords in that many years. So three and five years isn't far away. But if we get it right, protected, put the right tech in and solve the right problems, we could be in a much better place in society and as everything, those companies that hit the right timing put on their bootstraps and run to get.

Kieran Gilmurray: 26:31

As you said, it's not just talent, it's tech, it's money, it's understanding, it's the risks, it's everything around the sea. You typical for one of our better phrase without, uh, putting the technology down in any way. Typical it problem, but it feels bigger and everything else. Thank you just a little bit more about you and your excellent content. How did they go about doing that?

Justin Lewis: 26:52

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So you know, folks can find me and the company Quantum Roads R-H-O-D-E-S on LinkedIn. I'll make sure I can have some of that information in the show notes as well. Quantumroadscom on LinkedIn, and we're very excited about the advancements and some of the things that we have queued up, lined up for the next few months. We're operating out of the DC area, but we have clients all over the US and we're also planning an AR related event in collaboration with IBM and the local tech ecosystem in Arlington, virginia. That is well positioned for leaders to take advantage of in order to see how they can solve some of their problems leveraging AI and some of the other products and solutions and tools that we offer as a company and, of course, our partner, ibm, offers as well.

Kieran Gilmurray: 27:48

The future is bright. The future is AI and quantum computing together. I'm very excited. Justin thank you and audience, thank you very much for listening in. Until next time, stay safe.