“The videos look great of a humanoid doing backflips and parkour. But they’re certainly not safe and they’re not commercially deployable anytime soon.”
“I worry we’re falling into a complexity trap. Your slime mould is beautifully well-suited to what it’s meant to do. Let’s not go for complexity for the sake of it.”
“Most enterprises ask about optimisation, simulation, and cryptography, hoping for breakthroughs in areas like portfolio optimisation or materials discovery. But the reality is that measurable gains today come only from narrow hybrid pilots, and primarily on quantum annealers, with broader transformational value still at least five years out.”
“The teams who will actually crack quantum are people like Phasecraft, who sit precisely in the algorithms/simulation layer where AI can’t shortcut the work.”
“Energy usage is also a huge factor. Companies like PsiQuantum suggest their large‑scale photonic systems could require facilities on the scale of data centres. But this is going to require massive cooling. This isn’t a computer you just plug in the wall socket.”
“And whilst there’s a lot of focus on AI, it’s just a component of digital computing. Granted, it’s a very high-profile one at the moment. But it’s not the only thing. So the right question is really about classical/digital computing and quantum computing. I think a model that most people have is that a quantum computer is likely to be what you might call a co-processor.”
“I always felt that it was a 70-year journey from the conception of quantum computing to large scale fault-tolerant quantum computing [FTQC]. I was thinking about previous similar journeys such as the conception of a Bose Einstein condensate to its experimental realisation, which took about 70 years.”
Working as a technology journalist and writer since 1989, Marc has written for a wide range of titles on technology, business, education, politics and sustainability, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Register, New Statesman, Computer Weekly and many more.
