Few computer science breakthroughs have done so much in so little time as the artificial intelligence design known as a transformer. A transformer is a form of deep learning—a machine model based on networks in the brain—that researchers at Google first proposed in 2017. Seven years later the transformer, which enables ChatGPT and other chatbots to quickly generate sophisticated outputs in reply to user prompts, is the dynamo powering the ongoing AI boom. As remarkable as this AI design has already proved to be, what if you could run it on a quantum computer?
That might sound like some breathless mash-up proposed by an excitable tech investor. But quantum-computing researchers are now in fact asking this very question out of sheer curiosity and the relentless desire to make computers do new things. A new study published recently in Quantum used simple hardware to show that rudimentary quantum transformers could indeed work, hinting that more developed quantum-AI combinations might solve crucial problems in areas including encryption and chemistry—at least in theory.
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