Were firmly entrenched in the quantum era.
There werent any announcements and there wasnt any fanfare.
It just sort of happened.
One day we were in the deep learning era and the next wed gone quantum.
If we had to put a date on it, here at Neural wed choose 22 March, 2022.
Thats the day SandboxAQslipped out of stealth modeand starbursted out of the Alphabet (Google) research blanket.
Theres a certain risk involved in attaching such significance to a relatively unknown company.
And SandboxAQ isnt exactly building iPhones or autonomous vehicles.
Its solving really hard problems with technology thats extremely difficult to harness.
Sandbox who?
The A in AQ stands forartificial intelligenceand the Q is for quantum.
The first problem SandboxAQ decided to attack was encryption.
The current standard is called RSA.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
As you might imagine, the 45-year-old security protocol wasnt designed to thwart quantum decryption technology.
Up until now, that hasnt mattered much.
There isnt a computer on the planet capable of performing quantum decryption.
But there will be.
In fact, Sandbox AQs focus includes quantum sensing, quantum communications, quantum simulations, and quantum cryptography.
During our interview, we discussed the massive problem of updating RSA.
Thousands of companies use RSA around the globe.
Someone has to create the on-ramps to the new protocol and show businesses how to transition.
But theres more at stake than just future-proofing.
According to Hidary, the big benefit is protection from SNDL or, store now, decrypt later attacks.
Unfortunately, as Hidary put it:
Some of the horses have already left the barn.
But we can still protect the rest.
As we close in on quantum decryption, its likely well see SNDL attacks increase in scope and volume.
That makes it all the more important to develop PQC as soon as possible.
The future is now
SandboxAQ is poised to burst into the quantum technologies scene with immediate impact.
It has contracts with healthcare organizations, the US federal government, TELECOM, and the banking industry.
Between Googlestime crystalsand SandboxAQsquantum-as-a-service technologies, its apparent that Alphabet is spearheading the industry.
