November 2, 2025 • 45 mins
Imagine if your computer could explore a landscape of possibilities all at once, using the same rules that make electrons behave in surprising ways. That’s the mental pivot Farai, a quantum physicist and teacher, helps us make as we break down what quantum computing really is and where it actually wins. We trade hype for clarity, showing how superposition, entanglement, and interference become practical tools when classical methods hit walls.
We walk through the real stakes: modeling complex materials to build safer batteries and corrosion-resistant coatings, accelerating drug discovery by simulating chemistry where properties emerge, and tackling massive optimization problems that govern airport gates, delivery routes, and supply chains. Farai explains why quantum machines are not replacements for CPUs or GPUs but new teammates in a hybrid stack, each part doing what it does best. The goal is targeted advantage, not universal speedups, and the payoff arrives when the search space explodes beyond classical reach.
Along the way, we zoom out to nature as our design mentor. Bacteria that fix nitrogen more efficiently than factories, plants that capture sunlight better than our best solar cells, human brains that run powerful cognition on twenty watts—these examples aren’t trivia; they are roadmaps for engineering. By learning from natural intelligence and combining it with quantum algorithms, we can cut energy waste, shorten R&D cycles, and unlock better outcomes across industry and public services. Farai also shares his work leading the Africa Quantum Consortium, proving that the next wave of innovation is global, collaborative, and grounded in education.
If you care about the future of computing, climate tech, logistics, and medicine, this conversation will sharpen your lens. Listen, subscribe, and share with someone who still thinks quantum is just sci‑fi. Then tell us: which real-world problem would you optimize first?
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
.
And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/
See you next time on Follow The Brand!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome everybody to the Plumbering Punkness.
This is your host, Grant McGall.
We're gonna go all the way downto Louisiana in the three point
Louisiana area that I have beenthat I've been introduced to by
Ferrari.
I'm loving how he says his namebecause he just taught me how to
pronounce it correctly.
I probably still didn't do itright, but I'm gonna do the best
(00:24):
I can because Ferrari, you areon the leading edge on quantum
computing.
And there's a lot of informationout there, there's a lot of
intelligence out there aboutquantum, and there's a lot of
misinformation and misconceptionabout quantum.
Like what can it do?
What can it do?
People really are still kind oflike on the fence about how
(00:45):
we're gonna use this.
And there's a big buzz aroundartificial intelligence and
quantum computing.
That those two convergence couldbe very explosive in our world.
So please introduce yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
All right, thank you, Grant.
Uh, thank you so much for havingme.
And yes, um, I'm joining youfrom Louisiana.
So my name is Farai, which youdid very well.
Um Farai, my jandu.
I'm from Zimbabwe, uh, but I'mjoining you from Louisiana.
I am a quantum physicist.
Um, I've got a dual master's inuh applied physics, uh, one of
(01:24):
them in theory, uh, one of themuh thesis best, uh, and I'm a
teacher.
So I'm a teacher at heart.
I love teaching.
I've been doing that for morethan 15 years.
I love teaching physics becausephysics is fun.
Physics to me is a way of it's away of thinking.
And I don't say this because I'ma physicist.
(01:45):
I come across other people.
Recently, I was listening toAndrej Capati, one of the
founders of OpenAI, and he'salso interested in education.
So uh the host was asking himabout if you were going to be
teaching young people somethingcool that's really super
important in today's world, whatis it going to be?
It's like with no bias, physics.
(02:07):
Like, why is that the case?
Because it's just is it allowsyour brain to do interesting
things early on in life.
And it teaches you how to thinkabout things, how to solve
problems, how to just understandthe universe, which is where we
all play.
So love that I'm a physicsteacher at a school of science
(02:27):
and math, science, math, andarts.
So it's the Louisiana School ofScience, Math and Arts, it's a
state school uh which bringstogether motivated students to
come and you know chase theirgoals and plan for the big stage
to be leaders and innovators.
And there's no better place todo what I do than that.
Uh, and uh recently the schooluh won an award of having the
(02:51):
best teachers.
So I'm amongst some people whoare teaching me amazing things
on how to, you know, uh how toexplain these complicated,
seemingly complicated conceptsand make them accessible to
everyone.
That's what I love to do.
I want to talk about physics toeveryone so that they can use it
as a tool in terms of thinkingabout their own life, their own
(03:12):
careers, their own problems, uh,and anything else.
Uh, and and and and use thatconcept as a you know, as an
additional way of looking atthings and uh uh extracting
meaning from situations, fromour universe, from happenings.
And I know once in a while youhave had to come across
something that you know uhdemanded that you think as a
(03:33):
physicist.
So we are all physicists.
Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (03:37):
As a matter of fact, I know so this might be some
information that you may nothave known, but my favorite
subject in high school wasphysics.
I loved it.
And I didn't I gotta see, Iremember I gotta see in the
class, but that wasn't thepoint.
The point was I loved how therewas no right answer or wrong
(04:01):
answer when you approach thephysics problem.
To your point, it was like, Iwant to understand your critical
thinking process.
How did you arrive at thisanswer that you came up with?
It's not just the answer.
How what was the methodology?
What was the thinking?
How did you see this happening?
(04:21):
You know, in physics, they say,hey, you can balance an elephant
on the side of a cliff justusing his trunk by using, you
know, quantum physics.
You'd be like, wow.
And it's not so much of that,oh, can it really happen?
It's just the process ofthinking through that type of
thing to hypothetically see thatit could happen.
So this opens up a lot of I callout of the box thinking.
(04:47):
So we can see things like, hey,you know, we only experience the
world according to ourunderstanding of the world.
So if we can increase ourunderstanding and how we see
things, we can have a betteroutcome or a better output in
our life experience, I think.
So with that said, this is thiswhole thing around quantum
(05:08):
computing.
If you would be so kind to fromto explain to my audience who
are mostly probably like, I knowa little bit about quantum, I've
heard of a cubic or one, a zero.
I but I I'm really at that baselevel.
First, give us an overview ofwhat you think quantum computing
is.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Okay, um, so before we even go to quantum computing,
which is the fun part, let melet me say we are quantum
objects fundamentally.
So when people talk aboutquantum computing, it sounds
like you know, uh far out there,you know, alien and this I don't
(05:57):
know, coming out of thin air andin existence field which has
just arrived from nowhere.
Uh, and as long as we agree thatmatter is made up of atoms, and
atoms are made up of uhsubatomic particles, and perhaps
you go to electrons to protonsto neutrons, and we can even
(06:18):
subdivide these into otherquarks, leptons, you name it.
So if we agree on thefundamental building blocks of
nature, and agree that when weget to those fundamental levels
of subatomic particles, you andme don't live there.
So we don't have an intuition ofthe way things work there.
So when we talk about, forexample, recently the Nobel
(06:40):
Prize was awarded to JohnMartinez and the group uh and
and uh the other coolresearchers, uh, and they one of
the concepts was on quantumtunneling.
Uh, so they demonstrated that ata macroscopic level all this
quantum phenomena could be, youknow, could could could uh could
be exhibited at a microscopiclevel and used to build circuits
(07:01):
and you know uh uh uh do coolthings with.
So one would ask and say, I cantunnel, right?
I can't penetrate through a drywall.
Uh, how come we can think aboutelectrons penetrating through
barriers?
Then we begin to introduce theworld of possibilities and
probabilities anduncertainities, and then that
(07:23):
changes the picture.
So, to your point early on, itchanges the way you think.
So, the moment you arechallenged, it will be like, oh,
so I could actually think aboutthis world we live in in
uncertainty terms and inprobability terms, which is what
we we we we do every now andthen.
(07:44):
We do that when we think aboutthe weather.
We we are never definite thattomorrow it's going to be
raining, it's probably going tobe.
And I haven't heard of peopletaking the weather report guys
to court for whether that didn'thappen.
Sometimes you carry an umbrella,it doesn't rain, it's sunny, and
you're like, Oh, so what'shappened to the weatherman?
So it seems um our lives areprobabilistic, and we are happy
(08:09):
with that in other worlds untilwe are not.
So, what I'm saying here isfundamentally uh nature is in
this probability maze of things,uncertainties, and at the
subatomic level, these reallyexpress very well.
And it has so happened that withthe improvement in technology in
uh in two ways (08:32):
one in miniaturizing you know uh um
electronic devices.
And if you followed recentlywhen um uh the founder of NVIDIA
was presenting uh their roadmaprecently in DC, he introduced
quantum very well because it'snative.
(08:53):
As you miniaturize devices andpack a lot of transistors in a
real state of uh material, thenthe transistors have to be very
small.
What is the smallest you canever be?
You begin to approach subatomicparticle sizes, and the moment
you get to that level, thisworld of physics usually washed
(09:13):
out of our world begins toexpress.
And then we talk aboutsuperposition, it becomes a
reality.
We can't talk about pinpointingposition of an electron or for
of a proton, these becomeconcepts that we have to change
because it's not no longer inthe world of our tennis balls,
our you know, uh uh, you know,pebbles and stones that we can
(09:35):
touch and feel.
So, in that world of things, wehave to reimagine the world at a
quantum uh mechanical level andshift our thinking.
The moment we're able to shiftour thinking into this
superposition world, a worldwhere things entangle, things
tunnel, and a world where we canplay around with interference of
these, you know, this maze ofthings and orchestrate to build
(09:59):
technological innovations, thenit becomes natural.
So, on a natural uh path ofprogress for classical tech,
which is the usualsemiconductor, you know, phones,
computers, GPUs, you name it.
Uh, as we try to make themfaster and better, smaller, and
interestingly, we want to makethem faster.
We also want to make themsmaller so that we can peg more
(10:22):
into into make more processingpower into them.
Then we get to subatomic level,then the physics shifts, and we
have to think again about how dowe make things work in that
world.
So now a lot of things have cometogether in terms of
technological innovation, ourunderstanding of manipulating
quantum physics, such that wecan engineer systems that can
(10:43):
utilize these phenomena thatexpress only at the subatomic
level.
And we can build technologicaltools that can sense our world
in very, very precise ways.
We can build tools that canallow us to take advantage of
entanglement and doteleportation of information and
do quantum communications and docommunication in secure ways, in
(11:07):
ways that we have never imaginedwe could do.
Then it also happens that we canuse these uh uh uh uh subatomic
particles and these laws, theserich laws of quantum physics to
do information processingbecause we can represent in
these physical states at thatlevel information.
And the good thing aboutrepresenting information in that
(11:28):
level is instead of only havingaccess to uh zeros and ones,
which are on and off voltages,we can begin to get access to
this superposition maze ofpossibilities and use it for
information processing.
It allows us to encode andrecord more information.
We have got more space torepresent information.
(11:50):
We usually I usually enjoy usingvectors.
Actually, I've been teachingthem recently in high school,
and I was talking about how wevisualize this information in
living in our open space aslines with the you know, as
lines with arrows, and then wecan represent, we can point
these arrows anywhere we want,because we have all this
360-degree you know worldavailable to us, even more
(12:13):
degrees of freedom if you wantinfinity degrees of freedom, and
we can use those to encodeinformation.
So instead of representinginformation only as one or zero,
we can represent thisinformation in these infinity
possibilities in what we call aHilbert space.
So we begin to give this space aspecial name and we give it
special features, we give itspecial mathematics, and we
(12:34):
allow a programmer to put itinto an algorithm and manipulate
these devices we can build todayto do information processing in
amazing, fundamentally differentways.
So the quantum computer is notum a progress, uh it's not part
of the progress of superconductsof semiconductor-based computers
(12:58):
that we all know, which are wecalled classical computers.
Quantum computers are anentirely new species of
computing device because theyare based on fundamentally
different rules and laws, andeven programming them takes a
shift in understanding, and thatis what makes them fun, makes
them powerful.
(13:19):
But in conclusion, they are notcoming to replace your classical
computer, which is yoursupercomputers, your big data
center computers, your laptops,your GPUs.
No, this is why Nvidia isbuilding a stakeway, it combines
you know your GPUs.
Uh, people are thinking ofbringing TPUs, your CPUs, and
(13:41):
using them for what all of theseare good at, because they're not
good at the same thing.
But when you combine them, theygive you a rich tool, a rich
architecture, a richinfrastructure that allows you
to do things we have neverimagined you can do.
So that is quantum computing,and that's how we get there.
And interestingly, before youcome in, these quantum computers
(14:02):
promise um when they areavailable in their full form,
they are still developing andvery fast.
So, and we love it that when yousee players like Nvidia coming
into there, it's showing youthat something is real, there
something is changing, somethingis shifting.
So they definitely are going toland and be available.
And right now they're availableand they are showing fast
progress and you know,surprising people in interesting
(14:24):
ways.
These quantum computers sohappen that so happen to bring
us capability to solve what aresome of the world's most
important problems, which are inoptimization, which are in drug
discovery, which can help usdiscover materials that are
better for batteries, to give uslong-range electric vehicles,
(14:45):
and to optimize how we makecomplicated devices, including
even making an aeroplane.
It is made out of two point,almost 2.5 million parts that
have to come together to buildan aeroplane.
How do you optimize thesequences of bringing them
together?
How do you optimize to find todiscover material that can
protect the aeroplane coatingfrom the challenges of you know
(15:08):
nature, if you want, so that thewings don't corrode?
That could happen for ships,that could happen for many
things that are useful for ourday-to-day life.
So that is why the quantumcomputers are important.
Different modality, differenttechniques of processing
information, different problemsthey can solve an additional
tool to the tools that we haveto do amazing things to take us
(15:29):
to the next level.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (15:31):
Oh, you you now that was textbook information, and I
want my audience to reallyrewind all that information and
play it very slowly for what yousaid, because it is the merit of
all our tech.
And then when you layer inquantum within that, it's a game
(15:52):
changer.
Now, one thing I've noticed inmy lifetime, I remember watching
shows like Star Trek, and I likeStar Trek, right?
Sit there and I watch Star Trekand I watch how they have their
communicator, you know, like Igot my hand here, and they were
doing uh video conferences onthe bridge, and all of a sudden
(16:13):
you would see you know thecaptain talking to the engineer.
This is all in the 1960s, sowe're thinking like, wow, this
is space age technology thatwe're getting uh to look at.
If you really look at thosethings, we everything that we
imagined of what we could usewith like with technology is now
in existence.
(16:34):
Even now we're getting to youknow space travel.
And the one thing that alwaysthe what the one thing, always
not the one trick pony in StarTrek that everybody loved was
the transport, right?
How you could just transport,you know, a human being from one
point in time to another, andthat seemed like, oh wow, you
know, that's that we'll we'llnever be able to do that.
(16:54):
Well, what you're talking about,and you just mentioned it in
quantum computing, theteleportation, the juxtaposition
of time, more or less.
And then if you can controlthose kinds of things to a
certain degree, you actuallyhave teleportation.
This is something that actuallyis being toured with and worked
(17:16):
on, and it used to be sciencefiction.
Now it's becoming science fact.
I truly believe anything that wecan imagine can be real.
This is why I always lovedphysics.
Even though it soundsimpossible, you know, from our
present state, our future state,is very possible.
Like you were saying about anelectric car, the extension of
(17:39):
how long it can go on on certainuh uh energy sources, things of
that nature.
Or we start looking at magnetismas a as a propellant, or how can
we propel ourselves, startlooking at space travel more
elegantly?
One thing I've always noticed inour use of technology is that,
and I'm talking about humankind, it's not very elegant when
(18:01):
you compare it to how natureuses technology or it is how it
utilizes energy, whether it's atthe earth level or the solar
system level or the universelevel, it's very elegant in how
it does certain things.
And if we can begin tounderstand that and get our
efficiencies together, we canstart to really have some
(18:22):
advances and start to understandhow we could potentially move to
other other places in space andtime a little bit more elegantly
than trying to blast through it,you know, like we're kind of
doing now, uh, which is not thatelegant because we were using
explosive technology if I if Ihad to say it like with rockets
(18:43):
and things like that.
But not to go too far down thatroad.
I want our audience to trulyunderstand what you said is so
important.
Quantum is a is has a use case,it has a specific use case in
what it does and how we can takelarge, super large amounts of
information and crunch it downfor so it becomes palatable for
us to use and then make betterdecisions and run our lives a
(19:07):
little a little better.
Help us understand from yourlens what can quantum computing
be used for that could solvesome big problems for us.
SPEAKER_01 (19:20):
Thank you.
So you gave the answer.
I'm just going to say it again.
You said it beautifully.
Because we went down to thisfundamental understanding of
nature and we are utilizing it,we are harnessing it to do
information processing.
Why do we want to do it thatway?
(19:41):
Richard Feynman's imagination incoming up with this idea of
quantum computing at thatseminar point was this
understanding you just expressedright now.
There are things that are soefficiently done by nature that
we haven't managed it toreplicate in the lab.
(20:04):
Uh, let's start with the.
I come from rural parts ofZimbabwe.
I grew up in the subsistencefarming communities in Zimbabwe.
We have always been takingmanure from the crow where our
cows, you know, uh live, and wetake it to the fields as our
fertilizer for the season.
(20:24):
It so happens that bacteria candigest on that so efficiently
and do nitrogen fixation andprovide nutrients to our plants
and give us a good harvest, agood nutritious harvest.
I'll underline.
Can we produce fertilizer in thefactories using the hub bulge
(20:50):
process and achieve the same uhthe same uh end?
No.
It takes a lot of energy toproduce fertilizer.
That is why fertilizer is notfound uh everywhere else, and
that's the reason why someregions have got hunger is
because they don't have accessto the you know to these
(21:12):
nutrients that are required byplants in order to get a good
harvest.
That is enough for a family orto feed a community.
This process is very hard to do,very expensive, uses a lot of
electricity, and people wish itcould be more efficient.
So that's just optimizingchemistry.
But bacteria has got thatfigured out even better using
(21:36):
very little energy.
You they don't need a powerplant for that.
Let's think about how we makedrugs.
We try to replicate, weunderstand uh the biological
system to the extent that we do,and we come up with all these
drugs, we bunch them together,we mix them so that some of them
are going to fight our bodies,but our bodies are going to
(21:59):
reject everything you put intothem.
So you want to stabilize thatand mask that and hide that so
that your body can cope up withit.
But can we take away the sideeffects and the toxins that get
into our body?
No.
But then our forefathers, ourancestors had natural helps.
And I see after people get sick,I've seen that because I've had
(22:21):
sick relatives, I have also beenpart of community where I've
seen people eventually resortingto organic methods of addressing
ailments.
Why do we end up there?
What is organic?
It's natural because weunderstand that in the lab we
can't replicate what naturedoes.
I recently came across anarticle that showed that we need
(22:43):
a tiny place, or in terms ofsurface area, square feet, you
name it, part of the US, whichis going where we can install
solar panels and we can harnessenough energy to power this
whole country.
As long as we build solar cellsthat are efficient enough.
Our solar cells are around 30 to31, 32 percent efficient at this
(23:06):
point.
Why can't they be 50?
Why can't they be safe entry?
That's an understanding ofmaterial science that we still
have to reach.
Plants are perfect at doingphotosynthesis, they are
optimized for absorbing whateverthey need from sunlight and make
things work.
So nature has this figured out,and perhaps it's time that we
(23:27):
understand how these tools thatharness the way nature works at
its fundamental and at itsfundamental level to think about
the problems that you knowchallenge us every day in our
world, especially these bigproblems.
So, this is how you begin tothink about material science.
This is how you begin to thinkabout drug discovery.
And that process of drugdiscovery takes many years,
(23:50):
including through clinicaltrials, working against the side
effects until you get that druginto the market.
It's not even at that levelwhere it's good enough.
It's just good enough so thatcompared to not having it, yes,
it justifies that we should haveit in the market because without
it, the the outcomes are perhapsdire.
But otherwise, it's not perfect.
(24:12):
So this is where quantumcomputers shine.
In those to address thoseproblems where this
understanding of how naturefundamentally operates uh is
really a huge lift.
So these problems are aboutoptimization, how do we
distribute resources from wherethey are to where they have to
go?
(24:32):
Our world struggles, not out ofa lack of abundance, but out of
just a terrible distribution, uma terrible asymmetry.
It could be in information, itcould be in resource, it could
be in capital, it could be, youknow, in anything you can think
about.
There is always somewhere wherethings are more concentrated
(24:53):
than where they are required.
And such is the mystery of ourworld.
It could be labor, it could beraw materials, it could be
minerals, you know, all thosethings don't seem to be, you
know, we don't have to, we don'tseem to have this perfect
distribution.
So you can imagine that in yourlogistical, when you want to
handle logistics, which is oneof the big deals that we need to
(25:13):
be able to figure out to makeour world work more efficiently.
How do we gate aeroplanes whenthey come to big airports?
That looks like it's a trivialproblem, but it's not.
It's actually very, very hard.
There are many, manypermutations of thinking about
where should this aeroplane gowhen it lands so that it does so
efficiently, quickly, and getpeople on their next trip as
fast as possible.
(25:34):
Those are some of the problems.
Amazon struggles with routingour packages every day.
Which direction should I go?
Which uh you know, drop pointsshould I sequence, and uh, which
vehicle should I use?
And in order to make all thisbudget work and get create
maximum value or maximize profitor maximize on time of delivery,
(25:56):
you name it.
Then we talk about thematerials, just what on what
material should we build thistechnology for it to be
efficient?
We make beta batteries so thatthey, you know, we fight against
the heat generation duringcharging, uh, during charging
and discharge.
We we also charge them veryfast, we also make them you know
(26:19):
discharge very slowly, and wecan you know uh uh uh store more
energy without any detrimentaleffects fighting against the
things that can go wrong, whatmaterial can allow us to do
that?
That's not a trivial problem tosolve.
So, all these are the type ofproblems that scale up very fast
and challenge our supercomputersand our classical computers,
(26:42):
just because you just need tothink in a different way in
order to handle the scaling up.
How do you harness?
How do you handle that scalingup?
It appears as if it is only aquantum computer because it
works on those fundamentalprinciples that allow us this
huge computational space andallows us to leverage
superposition, entanglement,quantum interference, to
(27:05):
orchestrate these systems invery you know controlled ways in
order to solve problems likethat.
That seem to scale very fast ina way that just defeats your
your your your classicalcomputers, no matter how big
they will ever be.
SPEAKER_00 (27:19):
Yes, thank you.
I want you to thank you for forthat enlightenment and and
understanding where we are inour journey as as a human race
and understanding life of it ofitself and how we can we we are
just tapping into what whatnature is doing fundamentally
(27:41):
for millions of years.
It wasn't last week.
We we we're always looking atthis, oh, this is such great
innovation that you know we'vebeen expanding into a future
realm, but this has been goingon for a very long time.
I wrote a paper around that.
I said, no, right now we'retalking artificial intelligence,
and then we start looking athuman intelligence and then
natural intelligence or the theworld of nature that's always
(28:04):
been around us.
If we think about this, theseare intelligences from nature.
It's been doing this for a longtime.
These are living things, it'sbeen doing this for a long time.
Human beings have been doingthings a long time.
We were we were talking uh lastweek, like the same type of
compute power it takes tosimulate the human mind takes an
(28:25):
enormous amount of energy.
Yet our human mind operates onabout 20 watts.
So you got 20 watts ofefficiency in our elegant
computers, as I all say, ittakes many, many cycles of uh of
energy to create or simulatethat type of intelligence.
(28:47):
We have a long way to go inunderstanding and becoming more
uh efficient in our uses of ourour technology.
But it's gonna be a greatjourney, it's gonna be a great
journey and a humbling journey,I believe, as we go forward,
because we can recreate ourhuman world and our human
(29:09):
experience to be better.
Because we know we live in aworld really of scarcity, but I
don't think it's a scarcity ofresources, I think it's a
scarcity of information orintelligence of itself because
we don't know how to utilize it.
You said it your best.
(29:29):
We're talking about somethingmanure, yet we can't even
recreate that.
But it's been in existence foryou know untold millions of of
years.
But if we knew how to do that,our our world fundamentally
shifts.
So we start looking at, yeah, wehave a scarcity of food, we have
a scarcity of shelter, we have ascarcity of certain types of
(29:52):
resources, and if we can knew,like, you know what, maybe we're
doing it wrong because we livein a world, I've already this
has been my fundamental problem.
Farai.
My fundamental problem.
We have this scarcity resourceof energy.
We say, oh, we don't have enoughenergy.
We don't have enough oil.
We don't have enoughelectricity.
Yet we live in an abundant oceanof energy.
(30:16):
There's no shortage of energy.
There's no shortage.
We don't have to do anything forthat to happen, but we don't
tune into it, I don't think,very well.
And I think if we did that,those things that we should
start looking at as shortagestoday go away.
(30:38):
And we we start solving newerproblems.
That problem gets solved.
That's how I would like to seethis story, you know, unfold in
the quantum world.
SPEAKER_01 (30:49):
Yeah, and to your point, early on, you mentioned
about imagination.
So imagination is what it takes.
Um and if we can reimaginethings, we we will be able to
get on top of these challengesand these boxes where we are
trapped, and we'll be able totap into the into our greatness
(31:12):
as humanity.
And we have got that.
But for years, I think for onereason or another, we have
stopped believing, we you knowended up narrow-minded, you
know, having blingers, and youknow, we ended up being closed
up in a box, and we stoppedimagining.
(31:33):
So even Einstein talks aboutimagination is more important
than knowledge.
And I know I posted about thaton X recently, and it has been
attracting interesting attentionover there.
And uh that's what I'm saying.
To say one of the things thereason why I was I was posting
that was because uh I think ElonMusk posted about how they
(31:53):
wanted to etch some informationon um stones and send them in,
put them in a capsule and sendthem to space so that they orbit
space and the next civilizationwill be able to find that
information intact, perhaps youshould we face whatever
catastrophe our world can youknow may present to us.
Uh and I posted and said, if Iremember growing up in Zimbabwe,
(32:16):
I know the uh the group that wecall the Sun, in who are now
living in Botswana, and theyused to do rock art paintings,
and those rock art paintings arestill in existence today,
surviving weather elements,whatever they use as paint, I
don't know what it is, but it'sUV stabilized, it stands the
test of time, those drawings arestill there, and you wonder if
(32:40):
they had a bit extra knowledgelooking at the technology and
the chemistry that we all knownow today, if they were using
that optimize whatever they usedback then, maybe they will be
finding a chemical or a materialthat can write and edge things
on uh surfaces that will nevererase in you know billions of
(33:00):
years, if you want.
So we have always had this.
So, even if you go back tohistory, and because I also
participated in a session wherewe're talking about quantum and
art, because that's veryimportant.
Like you're saying, we have tothink about these natural
intelligences that we have,because everything else that we
build is out of our imaginationof understanding our universe
(33:22):
and how it already works, andhow we can harness that and
build the other things that weneed suiting our context as it
were.
So that is the way we arebuilding AI.
People are even beginning tothink of culture.
How do you culture AI?
So they have to be intelligentthat are talking to each other,
and then so all these things youknow show you how we learn as a
(33:44):
society.
We learn through interaction.
We that's how we that's how weget cultured, that's how we get
these value systems that informyou and me to know what's right
and wrong.
And so now we are we areconnecting these systems and
training them on data.
And it's interesting that thedata we are training AI on is
(34:05):
only a small fraction of bigdata that's available online.
Yes, a lot of the good data isout there in nature, it's in you
and me, it's out there, it's notin digital, and that is what we
have to tap into if we are evergoing to build a truly
human-level intelligence systemor a system that can get us
there.
(34:25):
So, you as you listen to theseconversations, uh, you know,
from you know different expertsand powered by imagination, you
know, uh, reconcile all thesethoughts.
There's a lot of value thatbegins to come out of it, and it
can help you think aboutwhatever comes next for you, for
your career, for solvingproblems that are of interest to
(34:47):
you, for your society, for yourcommunity, and whatever allows
our you know, us as humanity togo to the next level.
And that's that's what is thatis what physics, what physics
does.
It teaches you to have this openmind of thinking broadly, not
you know, not feel like you youare not a person who is going to
hit roadblocks.
(35:07):
You you think about is is isthis a problem or it's an
opportunity, or is there anotherway of thinking about it?
So that is what quantum does.
It's a new way of thinking.
And with that new way ofthinking, you can reimagine your
problems and find different, youknow, to find opportunities to
solve them, which you you mayhave been missing all along.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (35:27):
I love that that you have to think differently and
understanding that the answersare are available, but you've
got to reach for them.
Someone told me this a whileago, it really helped me to get
some perspective.
He said, I want you to imagineyourself in the center of the
(35:49):
universe, just at the center ofthe universe.
And he said, Tell me how big youare, and then he said, Tell me
how how small you are.
All of a sudden, those conceptsof large and small go away.
He said, There is the conceptsof size and space.
(36:12):
If I'm in the center of theuniverse, how how big are you?
How how relevant are you?
All those things are inproximity, and and there's other
factors that kind of come intothat, but fundamentally that
doesn't matter.
So you start to you start to seethings differently.
As you said earlier, we've kindof put ourselves in our own
(36:33):
mental box about how we seethings.
And I and I use another analogy,I always love this analogy
because it's a truth statement.
For a large portion of Europe inthe you know, before the 1500s,
they thought the world was flat.
This was their understanding,their fundamental understanding
of life was a flat world.
(36:55):
Was it real?
It was real in their mind, itwas real in their imagination,
but wasn't actually reality fromum, let's say a physical
standpoint, right?
And I still believe ourunderstanding right now, how we
conceive life to be or what itis, is just as imaginary as a
(37:17):
flat world, because it's reallyrelevant to our understanding of
life.
And that understanding doesn'tmean it's not real, it's it's
real to us at that time, veryreal.
But it becomes very unreal asyou begin to see other things
unfold.
And maybe that's part of that,you know, how we get to that
more elegant um technologicalsociety and other advances
(37:41):
because we're just beginning, asyou said, we're just the sample
set that we were all enamorednow with artificial
intelligence, just a smallestsegment of human intelligence
that being mirrored back to us.
When we look at the entireecosystem of true intelligence,
of true engineering, of truemarvels, it's a humbling fact, a
(38:03):
humbling fact that uh we have along way to go.
But if we apply these thingscorrectly, we can solve a lot of
current problems and thencontinue our journey on into
this exploration of this thingcalled life.
So before I let you go, I wantagain for the audience to know
um where they can contact you,where you are at, and what you
(38:27):
are most again passionate aboutfor people to know as we've gone
through this entire podcast.
What is that last thing, thatlast bit of information you'd
like to leave with us?
SPEAKER_01 (38:40):
Thank you so much.
Um one thing that I wanted tomention before I move on to
those things was I waschallenged when my teacher told
me that a straight line is astraight line is part of a very
large circle.
So it changed my like, oh, Ionly sing it as a straight line
(39:05):
because it's part of a verylarge circle, so I don't see
where it curves.
So that's you know, some ofthose examples that just blow
your mind away, and that's why Ilove physics.
It challenges you to just thinkabout things again and say, What
is this fact, or it is justbecause of where I am?
The other thing is it is veryimportant to travel because
(39:26):
traveling exposes you to uh todifferent communities, different
people, different worlds, youstop being a village champion,
it gets you out of the box.
You begin to see that you are avery small part of a very big
world with a lot of things thatare happening, and there's so
much to learn from, and there'sso much you don't know.
(39:49):
It makes you stay humble, itmakes you stay curious, and you
learn every day.
What I do and what I'mpassionate about is I'm just a
curious person.
I love learning, and I lovesharing that knowledge with
others.
I love you know demonstratingthat we can actually get out of
(40:10):
this box and do big things.
So I am a community builder, I'ma teacher, I'm a community
builder, and I'm young at heart.
I'm learning every day.
That's why I teach.
So I teach because I want tolearn every day.
I want to be challenged to go togo and share with other people
what I'm learning, get them tochallenge my thoughts.
(40:31):
I've got an open mind, I can goback again and I can emerge with
new understanding.
So I love feedback, and that isa good place for me to thrive as
well.
So I'm a multitasker.
I'm a multitasker, I'm amulti-talented person who works
on many things.
I am scatterbrained, believe youme.
(40:51):
I work every day to you knowfight very hard to make sure
that I keep things in line, insequence, in sync, and I do what
I have to do.
So I'm a teacher, I'm acommunity builder.
I'm I am building one of thelargest efforts ever done in
Africa to bring people togetheraround quantum computing.
So yeah, I'm I'm a foundingexecutive director of the
(41:12):
organization called the AfricaQuantum Consortium.
If you follow me on LinkedIn,you will, you know, uh
experience my journey with me.
You will see where I've been,where I'm going, and what we're
doing every day.
And how this is my passion isbecause it brings people
together.
I love it when we just haveconversations like what we are
(41:33):
having now, exchangingperspectives, calibrating each
other, challenging each other tothink out of the box and to keep
on learning and to re-evaluatethings and you know, question
things that are in front of us.
Not in a bad way, but with thatview to make things better, with
(41:54):
that view to make, you know, toget other people out of their
own mental traps so that theycan achieve their full capacity.
They can, I believe each andevery one of us is a very
important resource in thecomputational equation of the
world, if we are allowed toperform.
So I want all of us to be goodqubits.
(42:16):
I imagine we are all part of abig quantum computer.
If we are all made up of atomsand made up of matter, and we
are natural beings, then we arequbits.
We are those bits of informationin a quantum system, and we are
all very capable of workingtogether to orchestrate this
(42:37):
wave that makes humanityflourish, that makes our world a
better place, and that makes ourlives more meaningful.
And that makes you and me get tothat day when we are washed out,
we are satisfied of our role.
We were good qubits, we playedour part in the computational
equation, and we made theuniverse achieve its ends,
(43:01):
whatever that is.
I think that's the big picture,and that's who I am.
That's where so you can find meon LinkedIn, and that's the best
place to find me.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00 (43:10):
Oh no, thank you again for being on the Follow
Brand show.
This is your first appearance,and I want the audience to get
behind what you just saidbecause you are doing great
things, uh, not only in the US,but also in Africa, also in your
home country of uh Zimbabwe.
I think all of these things areso important because this is a
(43:31):
new age of mankind that I seeunfolding, you know, going and
getting just all the otherheadlines that were happening,
you gotta look at what our ourworld is fundamentally shifting
in front of us and and otherthings are just occurring.
And we I I can see, you know, mykids' kids looking at this like,
wow, you know, uh this is a bigchange.
(43:54):
Because if you really look backeven, you know, a hundred years
ago, all right, just imagineyourself in the world of 1925
and then you were teleported to2025.
What a big difference.
What a huge difference in spaceand time and in experience that
(44:18):
has occurred.
So we are on a great journey.
So I want to thank you again forbeing on the show, and you've
already told us exactly how tocontact you.
So I encourage everybody tocontact you on LinkedIn.
I can't, and I want to telleverybody that you came to meet
through Yara.
Yara um introduced us together.
She introduced Sri Mati uh uhwith me as well.
(44:41):
She knows some very, verywonderful people that are doing
enlightening things in thisworld.
And we need to know more peoplelike you.
I want to know the other qubitsout there, like farat fire that
are out there so we can do moreand get these positive images
out there, these positiveconversations going.
So thank you again.
(45:02):
And your entire audience cantune into all the episodes that
follow the brand at five starbdm.
That is the number five.
That is Star S T R BDM.
That's for brand for being forbrand, be for development,
infomasters.com.
I want to thank you again forbeing on the show.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Welcome everybody to the Plumbering Punkness.
This is your host, Grant McGall.
We're gonna go all the way downto Louisiana in the three point
Louisiana area that I have beenthat I've been introduced to by
Ferrari.
I'm loving how he says his namebecause he just taught me how to
pronounce it correctly.
I probably still didn't do itright, but I'm gonna do the best
(00:24):
I can because Ferrari, you areon the leading edge on quantum
computing.
And there's a lot of informationout there, there's a lot of
intelligence out there aboutquantum, and there's a lot of
misinformation and misconceptionabout quantum.
Like what can it do?
What can it do?
People really are still kind oflike on the fence about how
(00:45):
we're gonna use this.
And there's a big buzz aroundartificial intelligence and
quantum computing.
That those two convergence couldbe very explosive in our world.
So please introduce yourself.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
All right, thank you, Grant.
Uh, thank you so much for havingme.
And yes, um, I'm joining youfrom Louisiana.
So my name is Farai, which youdid very well.
Um Farai, my jandu.
I'm from Zimbabwe, uh, but I'mjoining you from Louisiana.
I am a quantum physicist.
Um, I've got a dual master's inuh applied physics, uh, one of
(01:24):
them in theory, uh, one of themuh thesis best, uh, and I'm a
teacher.
So I'm a teacher at heart.
I love teaching.
I've been doing that for morethan 15 years.
I love teaching physics becausephysics is fun.
Physics to me is a way of it's away of thinking.
And I don't say this because I'ma physicist.
(01:45):
I come across other people.
Recently, I was listening toAndrej Capati, one of the
founders of OpenAI, and he'salso interested in education.
So uh the host was asking himabout if you were going to be
teaching young people somethingcool that's really super
important in today's world, whatis it going to be?
It's like with no bias, physics.
(02:07):
Like, why is that the case?
Because it's just is it allowsyour brain to do interesting
things early on in life.
And it teaches you how to thinkabout things, how to solve
problems, how to just understandthe universe, which is where we
all play.
So love that I'm a physicsteacher at a school of science
(02:27):
and math, science, math, andarts.
So it's the Louisiana School ofScience, Math and Arts, it's a
state school uh which bringstogether motivated students to
come and you know chase theirgoals and plan for the big stage
to be leaders and innovators.
And there's no better place todo what I do than that.
Uh, and uh recently the schooluh won an award of having the
(02:51):
best teachers.
So I'm amongst some people whoare teaching me amazing things
on how to, you know, uh how toexplain these complicated,
seemingly complicated conceptsand make them accessible to
everyone.
That's what I love to do.
I want to talk about physics toeveryone so that they can use it
as a tool in terms of thinkingabout their own life, their own
(03:12):
careers, their own problems, uh,and anything else.
Uh, and and and and use thatconcept as a you know, as an
additional way of looking atthings and uh uh extracting
meaning from situations, fromour universe, from happenings.
And I know once in a while youhave had to come across
something that you know uhdemanded that you think as a
(03:33):
physicist.
So we are all physicists.
Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (03:37):
As a matter of fact, I know so this might be some
information that you may nothave known, but my favorite
subject in high school wasphysics.
I loved it.
And I didn't I gotta see, Iremember I gotta see in the
class, but that wasn't thepoint.
The point was I loved how therewas no right answer or wrong
(04:01):
answer when you approach thephysics problem.
To your point, it was like, Iwant to understand your critical
thinking process.
How did you arrive at thisanswer that you came up with?
It's not just the answer.
How what was the methodology?
What was the thinking?
How did you see this happening?
(04:21):
You know, in physics, they say,hey, you can balance an elephant
on the side of a cliff justusing his trunk by using, you
know, quantum physics.
You'd be like, wow.
And it's not so much of that,oh, can it really happen?
It's just the process ofthinking through that type of
thing to hypothetically see thatit could happen.
So this opens up a lot of I callout of the box thinking.
(04:47):
So we can see things like, hey,you know, we only experience the
world according to ourunderstanding of the world.
So if we can increase ourunderstanding and how we see
things, we can have a betteroutcome or a better output in
our life experience, I think.
So with that said, this is thiswhole thing around quantum
(05:08):
computing.
If you would be so kind to fromto explain to my audience who
are mostly probably like, I knowa little bit about quantum, I've
heard of a cubic or one, a zero.
I but I I'm really at that baselevel.
First, give us an overview ofwhat you think quantum computing
is.
SPEAKER_01 (05:31):
Okay, um, so before we even go to quantum computing,
which is the fun part, let melet me say we are quantum
objects fundamentally.
So when people talk aboutquantum computing, it sounds
like you know, uh far out there,you know, alien and this I don't
(05:57):
know, coming out of thin air andin existence field which has
just arrived from nowhere.
Uh, and as long as we agree thatmatter is made up of atoms, and
atoms are made up of uhsubatomic particles, and perhaps
you go to electrons to protonsto neutrons, and we can even
(06:18):
subdivide these into otherquarks, leptons, you name it.
So if we agree on thefundamental building blocks of
nature, and agree that when weget to those fundamental levels
of subatomic particles, you andme don't live there.
So we don't have an intuition ofthe way things work there.
So when we talk about, forexample, recently the Nobel
(06:40):
Prize was awarded to JohnMartinez and the group uh and
and uh the other coolresearchers, uh, and they one of
the concepts was on quantumtunneling.
Uh, so they demonstrated that ata macroscopic level all this
quantum phenomena could be, youknow, could could could uh could
be exhibited at a microscopiclevel and used to build circuits
(07:01):
and you know uh uh uh do coolthings with.
So one would ask and say, I cantunnel, right?
I can't penetrate through a drywall.
Uh, how come we can think aboutelectrons penetrating through
barriers?
Then we begin to introduce theworld of possibilities and
probabilities anduncertainities, and then that
(07:23):
changes the picture.
So, to your point early on, itchanges the way you think.
So, the moment you arechallenged, it will be like, oh,
so I could actually think aboutthis world we live in in
uncertainty terms and inprobability terms, which is what
we we we we do every now andthen.
(07:44):
We do that when we think aboutthe weather.
We we are never definite thattomorrow it's going to be
raining, it's probably going tobe.
And I haven't heard of peopletaking the weather report guys
to court for whether that didn'thappen.
Sometimes you carry an umbrella,it doesn't rain, it's sunny, and
you're like, Oh, so what'shappened to the weatherman?
So it seems um our lives areprobabilistic, and we are happy
(08:09):
with that in other worlds untilwe are not.
So, what I'm saying here isfundamentally uh nature is in
this probability maze of things,uncertainties, and at the
subatomic level, these reallyexpress very well.
And it has so happened that withthe improvement in technology in
uh in two ways (08:32):
one in miniaturizing you know uh um
electronic devices.
And if you followed recentlywhen um uh the founder of NVIDIA
was presenting uh their roadmaprecently in DC, he introduced
quantum very well because it'snative.
(08:53):
As you miniaturize devices andpack a lot of transistors in a
real state of uh material, thenthe transistors have to be very
small.
What is the smallest you canever be?
You begin to approach subatomicparticle sizes, and the moment
you get to that level, thisworld of physics usually washed
(09:13):
out of our world begins toexpress.
And then we talk aboutsuperposition, it becomes a
reality.
We can't talk about pinpointingposition of an electron or for
of a proton, these becomeconcepts that we have to change
because it's not no longer inthe world of our tennis balls,
our you know, uh uh, you know,pebbles and stones that we can
(09:35):
touch and feel.
So, in that world of things, wehave to reimagine the world at a
quantum uh mechanical level andshift our thinking.
The moment we're able to shiftour thinking into this
superposition world, a worldwhere things entangle, things
tunnel, and a world where we canplay around with interference of
these, you know, this maze ofthings and orchestrate to build
(09:59):
technological innovations, thenit becomes natural.
So, on a natural uh path ofprogress for classical tech,
which is the usualsemiconductor, you know, phones,
computers, GPUs, you name it.
Uh, as we try to make themfaster and better, smaller, and
interestingly, we want to makethem faster.
We also want to make themsmaller so that we can peg more
(10:22):
into into make more processingpower into them.
Then we get to subatomic level,then the physics shifts, and we
have to think again about how dowe make things work in that
world.
So now a lot of things have cometogether in terms of
technological innovation, ourunderstanding of manipulating
quantum physics, such that wecan engineer systems that can
(10:43):
utilize these phenomena thatexpress only at the subatomic
level.
And we can build technologicaltools that can sense our world
in very, very precise ways.
We can build tools that canallow us to take advantage of
entanglement and doteleportation of information and
do quantum communications and docommunication in secure ways, in
(11:07):
ways that we have never imaginedwe could do.
Then it also happens that we canuse these uh uh uh uh subatomic
particles and these laws, theserich laws of quantum physics to
do information processingbecause we can represent in
these physical states at thatlevel information.
And the good thing aboutrepresenting information in that
(11:28):
level is instead of only havingaccess to uh zeros and ones,
which are on and off voltages,we can begin to get access to
this superposition maze ofpossibilities and use it for
information processing.
It allows us to encode andrecord more information.
We have got more space torepresent information.
(11:50):
We usually I usually enjoy usingvectors.
Actually, I've been teachingthem recently in high school,
and I was talking about how wevisualize this information in
living in our open space aslines with the you know, as
lines with arrows, and then wecan represent, we can point
these arrows anywhere we want,because we have all this
360-degree you know worldavailable to us, even more
(12:13):
degrees of freedom if you wantinfinity degrees of freedom, and
we can use those to encodeinformation.
So instead of representinginformation only as one or zero,
we can represent thisinformation in these infinity
possibilities in what we call aHilbert space.
So we begin to give this space aspecial name and we give it
special features, we give itspecial mathematics, and we
(12:34):
allow a programmer to put itinto an algorithm and manipulate
these devices we can build todayto do information processing in
amazing, fundamentally differentways.
So the quantum computer is notum a progress, uh it's not part
of the progress of superconductsof semiconductor-based computers
(12:58):
that we all know, which are wecalled classical computers.
Quantum computers are anentirely new species of
computing device because theyare based on fundamentally
different rules and laws, andeven programming them takes a
shift in understanding, and thatis what makes them fun, makes
them powerful.
(13:19):
But in conclusion, they are notcoming to replace your classical
computer, which is yoursupercomputers, your big data
center computers, your laptops,your GPUs.
No, this is why Nvidia isbuilding a stakeway, it combines
you know your GPUs.
Uh, people are thinking ofbringing TPUs, your CPUs, and
(13:41):
using them for what all of theseare good at, because they're not
good at the same thing.
But when you combine them, theygive you a rich tool, a rich
architecture, a richinfrastructure that allows you
to do things we have neverimagined you can do.
So that is quantum computing,and that's how we get there.
And interestingly, before youcome in, these quantum computers
(14:02):
promise um when they areavailable in their full form,
they are still developing andvery fast.
So, and we love it that when yousee players like Nvidia coming
into there, it's showing youthat something is real, there
something is changing, somethingis shifting.
So they definitely are going toland and be available.
And right now they're availableand they are showing fast
progress and you know,surprising people in interesting
(14:24):
ways.
These quantum computers sohappen that so happen to bring
us capability to solve what aresome of the world's most
important problems, which are inoptimization, which are in drug
discovery, which can help usdiscover materials that are
better for batteries, to give uslong-range electric vehicles,
(14:45):
and to optimize how we makecomplicated devices, including
even making an aeroplane.
It is made out of two point,almost 2.5 million parts that
have to come together to buildan aeroplane.
How do you optimize thesequences of bringing them
together?
How do you optimize to find todiscover material that can
protect the aeroplane coatingfrom the challenges of you know
(15:08):
nature, if you want, so that thewings don't corrode?
That could happen for ships,that could happen for many
things that are useful for ourday-to-day life.
So that is why the quantumcomputers are important.
Different modality, differenttechniques of processing
information, different problemsthey can solve an additional
tool to the tools that we haveto do amazing things to take us
(15:29):
to the next level.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (15:31):
Oh, you you now that was textbook information, and I
want my audience to reallyrewind all that information and
play it very slowly for what yousaid, because it is the merit of
all our tech.
And then when you layer inquantum within that, it's a game
(15:52):
changer.
Now, one thing I've noticed inmy lifetime, I remember watching
shows like Star Trek, and I likeStar Trek, right?
Sit there and I watch Star Trekand I watch how they have their
communicator, you know, like Igot my hand here, and they were
doing uh video conferences onthe bridge, and all of a sudden
(16:13):
you would see you know thecaptain talking to the engineer.
This is all in the 1960s, sowe're thinking like, wow, this
is space age technology thatwe're getting uh to look at.
If you really look at thosethings, we everything that we
imagined of what we could usewith like with technology is now
in existence.
(16:34):
Even now we're getting to youknow space travel.
And the one thing that alwaysthe what the one thing, always
not the one trick pony in StarTrek that everybody loved was
the transport, right?
How you could just transport,you know, a human being from one
point in time to another, andthat seemed like, oh wow, you
know, that's that we'll we'llnever be able to do that.
(16:54):
Well, what you're talking about,and you just mentioned it in
quantum computing, theteleportation, the juxtaposition
of time, more or less.
And then if you can controlthose kinds of things to a
certain degree, you actuallyhave teleportation.
This is something that actuallyis being toured with and worked
(17:16):
on, and it used to be sciencefiction.
Now it's becoming science fact.
I truly believe anything that wecan imagine can be real.
This is why I always lovedphysics.
Even though it soundsimpossible, you know, from our
present state, our future state,is very possible.
Like you were saying about anelectric car, the extension of
(17:39):
how long it can go on on certainuh uh energy sources, things of
that nature.
Or we start looking at magnetismas a as a propellant, or how can
we propel ourselves, startlooking at space travel more
elegantly?
One thing I've always noticed inour use of technology is that,
and I'm talking about humankind, it's not very elegant when
(18:01):
you compare it to how natureuses technology or it is how it
utilizes energy, whether it's atthe earth level or the solar
system level or the universelevel, it's very elegant in how
it does certain things.
And if we can begin tounderstand that and get our
efficiencies together, we canstart to really have some
(18:22):
advances and start to understandhow we could potentially move to
other other places in space andtime a little bit more elegantly
than trying to blast through it,you know, like we're kind of
doing now, uh, which is not thatelegant because we were using
explosive technology if I if Ihad to say it like with rockets
(18:43):
and things like that.
But not to go too far down thatroad.
I want our audience to trulyunderstand what you said is so
important.
Quantum is a is has a use case,it has a specific use case in
what it does and how we can takelarge, super large amounts of
information and crunch it downfor so it becomes palatable for
us to use and then make betterdecisions and run our lives a
(19:07):
little a little better.
Help us understand from yourlens what can quantum computing
be used for that could solvesome big problems for us.
SPEAKER_01 (19:20):
Thank you.
So you gave the answer.
I'm just going to say it again.
You said it beautifully.
Because we went down to thisfundamental understanding of
nature and we are utilizing it,we are harnessing it to do
information processing.
Why do we want to do it thatway?
(19:41):
Richard Feynman's imagination incoming up with this idea of
quantum computing at thatseminar point was this
understanding you just expressedright now.
There are things that are soefficiently done by nature that
we haven't managed it toreplicate in the lab.
(20:04):
Uh, let's start with the.
I come from rural parts ofZimbabwe.
I grew up in the subsistencefarming communities in Zimbabwe.
We have always been takingmanure from the crow where our
cows, you know, uh live, and wetake it to the fields as our
fertilizer for the season.
(20:24):
It so happens that bacteria candigest on that so efficiently
and do nitrogen fixation andprovide nutrients to our plants
and give us a good harvest, agood nutritious harvest.
I'll underline.
Can we produce fertilizer in thefactories using the hub bulge
(20:50):
process and achieve the same uhthe same uh end?
No.
It takes a lot of energy toproduce fertilizer.
That is why fertilizer is notfound uh everywhere else, and
that's the reason why someregions have got hunger is
because they don't have accessto the you know to these
(21:12):
nutrients that are required byplants in order to get a good
harvest.
That is enough for a family orto feed a community.
This process is very hard to do,very expensive, uses a lot of
electricity, and people wish itcould be more efficient.
So that's just optimizingchemistry.
But bacteria has got thatfigured out even better using
(21:36):
very little energy.
You they don't need a powerplant for that.
Let's think about how we makedrugs.
We try to replicate, weunderstand uh the biological
system to the extent that we do,and we come up with all these
drugs, we bunch them together,we mix them so that some of them
are going to fight our bodies,but our bodies are going to
(21:59):
reject everything you put intothem.
So you want to stabilize thatand mask that and hide that so
that your body can cope up withit.
But can we take away the sideeffects and the toxins that get
into our body?
No.
But then our forefathers, ourancestors had natural helps.
And I see after people get sick,I've seen that because I've had
(22:21):
sick relatives, I have also beenpart of community where I've
seen people eventually resortingto organic methods of addressing
ailments.
Why do we end up there?
What is organic?
It's natural because weunderstand that in the lab we
can't replicate what naturedoes.
I recently came across anarticle that showed that we need
(22:43):
a tiny place, or in terms ofsurface area, square feet, you
name it, part of the US, whichis going where we can install
solar panels and we can harnessenough energy to power this
whole country.
As long as we build solar cellsthat are efficient enough.
Our solar cells are around 30 to31, 32 percent efficient at this
(23:06):
point.
Why can't they be 50?
Why can't they be safe entry?
That's an understanding ofmaterial science that we still
have to reach.
Plants are perfect at doingphotosynthesis, they are
optimized for absorbing whateverthey need from sunlight and make
things work.
So nature has this figured out,and perhaps it's time that we
(23:27):
understand how these tools thatharness the way nature works at
its fundamental and at itsfundamental level to think about
the problems that you knowchallenge us every day in our
world, especially these bigproblems.
So, this is how you begin tothink about material science.
This is how you begin to thinkabout drug discovery.
And that process of drugdiscovery takes many years,
(23:50):
including through clinicaltrials, working against the side
effects until you get that druginto the market.
It's not even at that levelwhere it's good enough.
It's just good enough so thatcompared to not having it, yes,
it justifies that we should haveit in the market because without
it, the the outcomes are perhapsdire.
But otherwise, it's not perfect.
(24:12):
So this is where quantumcomputers shine.
In those to address thoseproblems where this
understanding of how naturefundamentally operates uh is
really a huge lift.
So these problems are aboutoptimization, how do we
distribute resources from wherethey are to where they have to
go?
(24:32):
Our world struggles, not out ofa lack of abundance, but out of
just a terrible distribution, uma terrible asymmetry.
It could be in information, itcould be in resource, it could
be in capital, it could be, youknow, in anything you can think
about.
There is always somewhere wherethings are more concentrated
(24:53):
than where they are required.
And such is the mystery of ourworld.
It could be labor, it could beraw materials, it could be
minerals, you know, all thosethings don't seem to be, you
know, we don't have to, we don'tseem to have this perfect
distribution.
So you can imagine that in yourlogistical, when you want to
handle logistics, which is oneof the big deals that we need to
(25:13):
be able to figure out to makeour world work more efficiently.
How do we gate aeroplanes whenthey come to big airports?
That looks like it's a trivialproblem, but it's not.
It's actually very, very hard.
There are many, manypermutations of thinking about
where should this aeroplane gowhen it lands so that it does so
efficiently, quickly, and getpeople on their next trip as
fast as possible.
(25:34):
Those are some of the problems.
Amazon struggles with routingour packages every day.
Which direction should I go?
Which uh you know, drop pointsshould I sequence, and uh, which
vehicle should I use?
And in order to make all thisbudget work and get create
maximum value or maximize profitor maximize on time of delivery,
(25:56):
you name it.
Then we talk about thematerials, just what on what
material should we build thistechnology for it to be
efficient?
We make beta batteries so thatthey, you know, we fight against
the heat generation duringcharging, uh, during charging
and discharge.
We we also charge them veryfast, we also make them you know
(26:19):
discharge very slowly, and wecan you know uh uh uh store more
energy without any detrimentaleffects fighting against the
things that can go wrong, whatmaterial can allow us to do
that?
That's not a trivial problem tosolve.
So, all these are the type ofproblems that scale up very fast
and challenge our supercomputersand our classical computers,
(26:42):
just because you just need tothink in a different way in
order to handle the scaling up.
How do you harness?
How do you handle that scalingup?
It appears as if it is only aquantum computer because it
works on those fundamentalprinciples that allow us this
huge computational space andallows us to leverage
superposition, entanglement,quantum interference, to
(27:05):
orchestrate these systems invery you know controlled ways in
order to solve problems likethat.
That seem to scale very fast ina way that just defeats your
your your your classicalcomputers, no matter how big
they will ever be.
SPEAKER_00 (27:19):
Yes, thank you.
I want you to thank you for forthat enlightenment and and
understanding where we are inour journey as as a human race
and understanding life of it ofitself and how we can we we are
just tapping into what whatnature is doing fundamentally
(27:41):
for millions of years.
It wasn't last week.
We we we're always looking atthis, oh, this is such great
innovation that you know we'vebeen expanding into a future
realm, but this has been goingon for a very long time.
I wrote a paper around that.
I said, no, right now we'retalking artificial intelligence,
and then we start looking athuman intelligence and then
natural intelligence or the theworld of nature that's always
(28:04):
been around us.
If we think about this, theseare intelligences from nature.
It's been doing this for a longtime.
These are living things, it'sbeen doing this for a long time.
Human beings have been doingthings a long time.
We were we were talking uh lastweek, like the same type of
compute power it takes tosimulate the human mind takes an
(28:25):
enormous amount of energy.
Yet our human mind operates onabout 20 watts.
So you got 20 watts ofefficiency in our elegant
computers, as I all say, ittakes many, many cycles of uh of
energy to create or simulatethat type of intelligence.
(28:47):
We have a long way to go inunderstanding and becoming more
uh efficient in our uses of ourour technology.
But it's gonna be a greatjourney, it's gonna be a great
journey and a humbling journey,I believe, as we go forward,
because we can recreate ourhuman world and our human
(29:09):
experience to be better.
Because we know we live in aworld really of scarcity, but I
don't think it's a scarcity ofresources, I think it's a
scarcity of information orintelligence of itself because
we don't know how to utilize it.
You said it your best.
(29:29):
We're talking about somethingmanure, yet we can't even
recreate that.
But it's been in existence foryou know untold millions of of
years.
But if we knew how to do that,our our world fundamentally
shifts.
So we start looking at, yeah, wehave a scarcity of food, we have
a scarcity of shelter, we have ascarcity of certain types of
(29:52):
resources, and if we can knew,like, you know what, maybe we're
doing it wrong because we livein a world, I've already this
has been my fundamental problem.
Farai.
My fundamental problem.
We have this scarcity resourceof energy.
We say, oh, we don't have enoughenergy.
We don't have enough oil.
We don't have enoughelectricity.
Yet we live in an abundant oceanof energy.
(30:16):
There's no shortage of energy.
There's no shortage.
We don't have to do anything forthat to happen, but we don't
tune into it, I don't think,very well.
And I think if we did that,those things that we should
start looking at as shortagestoday go away.
(30:38):
And we we start solving newerproblems.
That problem gets solved.
That's how I would like to seethis story, you know, unfold in
the quantum world.
SPEAKER_01 (30:49):
Yeah, and to your point, early on, you mentioned
about imagination.
So imagination is what it takes.
Um and if we can reimaginethings, we we will be able to
get on top of these challengesand these boxes where we are
trapped, and we'll be able totap into the into our greatness
(31:12):
as humanity.
And we have got that.
But for years, I think for onereason or another, we have
stopped believing, we you knowended up narrow-minded, you
know, having blingers, and youknow, we ended up being closed
up in a box, and we stoppedimagining.
(31:33):
So even Einstein talks aboutimagination is more important
than knowledge.
And I know I posted about thaton X recently, and it has been
attracting interesting attentionover there.
And uh that's what I'm saying.
To say one of the things thereason why I was I was posting
that was because uh I think ElonMusk posted about how they
(31:53):
wanted to etch some informationon um stones and send them in,
put them in a capsule and sendthem to space so that they orbit
space and the next civilizationwill be able to find that
information intact, perhaps youshould we face whatever
catastrophe our world can youknow may present to us.
Uh and I posted and said, if Iremember growing up in Zimbabwe,
(32:16):
I know the uh the group that wecall the Sun, in who are now
living in Botswana, and theyused to do rock art paintings,
and those rock art paintings arestill in existence today,
surviving weather elements,whatever they use as paint, I
don't know what it is, but it'sUV stabilized, it stands the
test of time, those drawings arestill there, and you wonder if
(32:40):
they had a bit extra knowledgelooking at the technology and
the chemistry that we all knownow today, if they were using
that optimize whatever they usedback then, maybe they will be
finding a chemical or a materialthat can write and edge things
on uh surfaces that will nevererase in you know billions of
(33:00):
years, if you want.
So we have always had this.
So, even if you go back tohistory, and because I also
participated in a session wherewe're talking about quantum and
art, because that's veryimportant.
Like you're saying, we have tothink about these natural
intelligences that we have,because everything else that we
build is out of our imaginationof understanding our universe
(33:22):
and how it already works, andhow we can harness that and
build the other things that weneed suiting our context as it
were.
So that is the way we arebuilding AI.
People are even beginning tothink of culture.
How do you culture AI?
So they have to be intelligentthat are talking to each other,
and then so all these things youknow show you how we learn as a
(33:44):
society.
We learn through interaction.
We that's how we that's how weget cultured, that's how we get
these value systems that informyou and me to know what's right
and wrong.
And so now we are we areconnecting these systems and
training them on data.
And it's interesting that thedata we are training AI on is
(34:05):
only a small fraction of bigdata that's available online.
Yes, a lot of the good data isout there in nature, it's in you
and me, it's out there, it's notin digital, and that is what we
have to tap into if we are evergoing to build a truly
human-level intelligence systemor a system that can get us
there.
(34:25):
So, you as you listen to theseconversations, uh, you know,
from you know different expertsand powered by imagination, you
know, uh, reconcile all thesethoughts.
There's a lot of value thatbegins to come out of it, and it
can help you think aboutwhatever comes next for you, for
your career, for solvingproblems that are of interest to
(34:47):
you, for your society, for yourcommunity, and whatever allows
our you know, us as humanity togo to the next level.
And that's that's what is thatis what physics, what physics
does.
It teaches you to have this openmind of thinking broadly, not
you know, not feel like you youare not a person who is going to
hit roadblocks.
(35:07):
You you think about is is isthis a problem or it's an
opportunity, or is there anotherway of thinking about it?
So that is what quantum does.
It's a new way of thinking.
And with that new way ofthinking, you can reimagine your
problems and find different, youknow, to find opportunities to
solve them, which you you mayhave been missing all along.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (35:27):
I love that that you have to think differently and
understanding that the answersare are available, but you've
got to reach for them.
Someone told me this a whileago, it really helped me to get
some perspective.
He said, I want you to imagineyourself in the center of the
(35:49):
universe, just at the center ofthe universe.
And he said, Tell me how big youare, and then he said, Tell me
how how small you are.
All of a sudden, those conceptsof large and small go away.
He said, There is the conceptsof size and space.
(36:12):
If I'm in the center of theuniverse, how how big are you?
How how relevant are you?
All those things are inproximity, and and there's other
factors that kind of come intothat, but fundamentally that
doesn't matter.
So you start to you start to seethings differently.
As you said earlier, we've kindof put ourselves in our own
(36:33):
mental box about how we seethings.
And I and I use another analogy,I always love this analogy
because it's a truth statement.
For a large portion of Europe inthe you know, before the 1500s,
they thought the world was flat.
This was their understanding,their fundamental understanding
of life was a flat world.
(36:55):
Was it real?
It was real in their mind, itwas real in their imagination,
but wasn't actually reality fromum, let's say a physical
standpoint, right?
And I still believe ourunderstanding right now, how we
conceive life to be or what itis, is just as imaginary as a
(37:17):
flat world, because it's reallyrelevant to our understanding of
life.
And that understanding doesn'tmean it's not real, it's it's
real to us at that time, veryreal.
But it becomes very unreal asyou begin to see other things
unfold.
And maybe that's part of that,you know, how we get to that
more elegant um technologicalsociety and other advances
(37:41):
because we're just beginning, asyou said, we're just the sample
set that we were all enamorednow with artificial
intelligence, just a smallestsegment of human intelligence
that being mirrored back to us.
When we look at the entireecosystem of true intelligence,
of true engineering, of truemarvels, it's a humbling fact, a
(38:03):
humbling fact that uh we have along way to go.
But if we apply these thingscorrectly, we can solve a lot of
current problems and thencontinue our journey on into
this exploration of this thingcalled life.
So before I let you go, I wantagain for the audience to know
um where they can contact you,where you are at, and what you
(38:27):
are most again passionate aboutfor people to know as we've gone
through this entire podcast.
What is that last thing, thatlast bit of information you'd
like to leave with us?
SPEAKER_01 (38:40):
Thank you so much.
Um one thing that I wanted tomention before I move on to
those things was I waschallenged when my teacher told
me that a straight line is astraight line is part of a very
large circle.
So it changed my like, oh, Ionly sing it as a straight line
(39:05):
because it's part of a verylarge circle, so I don't see
where it curves.
So that's you know, some ofthose examples that just blow
your mind away, and that's why Ilove physics.
It challenges you to just thinkabout things again and say, What
is this fact, or it is justbecause of where I am?
The other thing is it is veryimportant to travel because
(39:26):
traveling exposes you to uh todifferent communities, different
people, different worlds, youstop being a village champion,
it gets you out of the box.
You begin to see that you are avery small part of a very big
world with a lot of things thatare happening, and there's so
much to learn from, and there'sso much you don't know.
(39:49):
It makes you stay humble, itmakes you stay curious, and you
learn every day.
What I do and what I'mpassionate about is I'm just a
curious person.
I love learning, and I lovesharing that knowledge with
others.
I love you know demonstratingthat we can actually get out of
(40:10):
this box and do big things.
So I am a community builder, I'ma teacher, I'm a community
builder, and I'm young at heart.
I'm learning every day.
That's why I teach.
So I teach because I want tolearn every day.
I want to be challenged to go togo and share with other people
what I'm learning, get them tochallenge my thoughts.
(40:31):
I've got an open mind, I can goback again and I can emerge with
new understanding.
So I love feedback, and that isa good place for me to thrive as
well.
So I'm a multitasker.
I'm a multitasker, I'm amulti-talented person who works
on many things.
I am scatterbrained, believe youme.
(40:51):
I work every day to you knowfight very hard to make sure
that I keep things in line, insequence, in sync, and I do what
I have to do.
So I'm a teacher, I'm acommunity builder.
I'm I am building one of thelargest efforts ever done in
Africa to bring people togetheraround quantum computing.
So yeah, I'm I'm a foundingexecutive director of the
(41:12):
organization called the AfricaQuantum Consortium.
If you follow me on LinkedIn,you will, you know, uh
experience my journey with me.
You will see where I've been,where I'm going, and what we're
doing every day.
And how this is my passion isbecause it brings people
together.
I love it when we just haveconversations like what we are
(41:33):
having now, exchangingperspectives, calibrating each
other, challenging each other tothink out of the box and to keep
on learning and to re-evaluatethings and you know, question
things that are in front of us.
Not in a bad way, but with thatview to make things better, with
(41:54):
that view to make, you know, toget other people out of their
own mental traps so that theycan achieve their full capacity.
They can, I believe each andevery one of us is a very
important resource in thecomputational equation of the
world, if we are allowed toperform.
So I want all of us to be goodqubits.
(42:16):
I imagine we are all part of abig quantum computer.
If we are all made up of atomsand made up of matter, and we
are natural beings, then we arequbits.
We are those bits of informationin a quantum system, and we are
all very capable of workingtogether to orchestrate this
(42:37):
wave that makes humanityflourish, that makes our world a
better place, and that makes ourlives more meaningful.
And that makes you and me get tothat day when we are washed out,
we are satisfied of our role.
We were good qubits, we playedour part in the computational
equation, and we made theuniverse achieve its ends,
(43:01):
whatever that is.
I think that's the big picture,and that's who I am.
That's where so you can find meon LinkedIn, and that's the best
place to find me.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00 (43:10):
Oh no, thank you again for being on the Follow
Brand show.
This is your first appearance,and I want the audience to get
behind what you just saidbecause you are doing great
things, uh, not only in the US,but also in Africa, also in your
home country of uh Zimbabwe.
I think all of these things areso important because this is a
(43:31):
new age of mankind that I seeunfolding, you know, going and
getting just all the otherheadlines that were happening,
you gotta look at what our ourworld is fundamentally shifting
in front of us and and otherthings are just occurring.
And we I I can see, you know, mykids' kids looking at this like,
wow, you know, uh this is a bigchange.
(43:54):
Because if you really look backeven, you know, a hundred years
ago, all right, just imagineyourself in the world of 1925
and then you were teleported to2025.
What a big difference.
What a huge difference in spaceand time and in experience that
(44:18):
has occurred.
So we are on a great journey.
So I want to thank you again forbeing on the show, and you've
already told us exactly how tocontact you.
So I encourage everybody tocontact you on LinkedIn.
I can't, and I want to telleverybody that you came to meet
through Yara.
Yara um introduced us together.
She introduced Sri Mati uh uhwith me as well.
(44:41):
She knows some very, verywonderful people that are doing
enlightening things in thisworld.
And we need to know more peoplelike you.
I want to know the other qubitsout there, like farat fire that
are out there so we can do moreand get these positive images
out there, these positiveconversations going.
So thank you again.
(45:02):
And your entire audience cantune into all the episodes that
follow the brand at five starbdm.
That is the number five.
That is Star S T R BDM.
That's for brand for being forbrand, be for development,
infomasters.com.
I want to thank you again forbeing on the show.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.