Microsoft just made what is possibly the biggest announcement in Glenn’s lifetime. The company’s new 8-qubit Majorana 1 quantum computing chip could usher in an era of rapid change like mankind has never seen. Glenn explains what makes this technology so game-changing, what a “topological conductor” is, and what the world might look like in just a few years if these chips are deployed in computers or given to AI. But just as impressive is the other thing the CEO of Microsoft announced: the creation of a new state of matter …
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: So yesterday, they announced at Microsoft, right after we left the air. I got a note. From somebody that works at Microsoft, that says, we just announced this two minutes ago. You should see it.
It was pretty amazing. It was a video that they released. It was about 20 minutes. Let me tell you what the CEO of Microsoft tweeted, shortly thereafter.
A couple flexes on the quantum computing breakthrough we just announced. Listen to this sentence. Most of us grew up learning there are three main types of matter: Solid, liquid, and gas. Today, that has all changed. After nearly a 20-year pursuit, we've created an entirely new state of matter, unlocked by a new class of materials. Topoconductors. Topological conductors are -- if I can explain topological, and please, I'm way out of my depth on this.
If you really want to know, I'm trying to break it down in layman's terms, as I understand it. Topological is a state, if -- if you had a friendship bracelet, you know that a friendship bracelet can create any kind of shape. You can tie it in a figure eight. You can make it into a loop. It can bend upon itself. But none of the threads, the individual threads that make up that friendship bracelet, become confused with the other threads.
Okay?
It doesn't break. It retains its basic shape. But you can make it into anything. Got it?
Topological shapes, you have to think differently. A coffee cup, a Styrofoam cup and a doughnut are the same topological shape.
Meaning, they're generally round. And they have a hole in the center. Now, the coffee cup doesn't have a hole at the bottom, like the doughnut does. But it's the basic shape, okay?
And you can -- what a topological conductor is, is it can -- it can morph and move, but it could be a coffee cup or a doughnut. And it retains all of its same properties, even though you and I would go, that's not the same shape. Got it? Sorry for anybody who really understands this, that's the -- that's the height of my understanding in 12 hours of topological states.
Now, what they've done is they have found this fundamental leap in computing. They have built a -- a chip, that they have now made into a topological conductor by using an element, a molecule, that we didn't even know really existed up until a year ago. It was speculated that this molecule existed. I think back in the '20s or '30s. And that's what the chip is named after. The guy who has said, I think there's this molecule out there. We've never been able to find it. A year ago, after 19 years of Microsoft pouring money into this research, they finally found it, a year ago.
In that year's time, they've not only found that they could find it, but they could take it and they could control it. In a topological state. Or conductor.
It -- if you just think of that friendship bracelet, but this new molecule is like jelly running through the whole friendship bracelet. The jelly is that new molecule.
That molecule now is -- is being used like a cubit. A cubit is a way to process a quantum computer. It takes us from linear computing. One plus one equals zero. Wrong. One plus one equals one. Wrong. One plus one equals two. Correct. Instead, at the same time that it took me just to say one plus one equals zero, wrong! All one plus one questions are asked and answered at exactly the same time, and only one comes back right.
Okay. So it answers one plus one to infinity, equals infinity, plus one! Wrong.
It answers all of that in the same amount of time. So you don't have a linear thinking, device anymore. It takes your computing power, from what they announced yesterday. Now, they don't have this yet.
But what they announced is they can take this molecule. Like if you think of it finding this molecule and taking really teeny tweezers. And picked it up. And putting it on to this chip, one at a time.
They can put millions of these molecules on to this chip.
Millions of molecules will be way past the computation powers of the world's best supercomputer.
If the cloud all of the servers, all hooked together, were in a warehouse the size of Planet Earth. Okay? That's what they announced yesterday. And, again, they're only at eight cubits. But they say, if this works, they say, they could be at millions of cubits in a pretty short period of time. Everything changed yesterday. Everything changed yesterday.
STU: So, again, last hour, you were talking about this new development from Microsoft.
The new -- well, they say a new form of matter.
GLENN: Yes. They say that we know -- we grew up in a time that there are only three states.
STU: Solid, liquid, gas.
GLENN: Yeah, now that's want true right now. As of yesterday.
I mean, getting your arms around just the -- this is amazing. This is just the beginning. If you were -- if you read or heard about the Microsoft announcement yesterday.
This is what life is going to be like, multiple times a day, in the next three years.
You will not be able to wrap your mind around what the hell was just invented.
What does that even mean? That's the way your life will be, really, getting faster and faster, the closer we get to 2030.
STU: I feel like I can see the future. Because I can't wrap my mind around what's happening today.
GLENN: Today. Right. It's still though -- in some ways. You can wrap your mind around all the corruption and everything, that Biden was doing. There was some understanding of corruption and their goals don't meet our goals, et cetera, et cetera.
STU: Sure. Well, that I can handle.
GLENN: That you can handle.
STU: I'm talking about what you discussed last hour. Not to put too fine a point on it.
When they say, up until yesterday, we had solid, liquid, gas, and now we have this new kind of matter. They're not saying, they created this new kind of matter. They said, they have discovered it. And have harnessed it. They say, it was there the whole time. But it was something beyond the time of human beings, until basically this week.
GLENN: We couldn't find it. We couldn't control it. We didn't even know it actually existed. And we certainly didn't know how to control it.
In a year, okay. And they've been looking for it for 19 years. Microsoft. Longest running research program they've ever run. They found it a year ago, they know how to control it. And now, how to make it into a chip, something you could hold in your hand, that has a million cubits of quantum computing.
STU: Now, that if we know means nothing to me. Millions of cubits of quantum computing.
GLENN: Means all of the -- your phone. If they could put it in a phone, I'm not saying they can or will. If they could put that one chip in your phone, it would make your phone as powerful as the best supercomputer, with a server farm, the size of the planet earth.
Okay?
In your phone!
Okay?
That that's what that means. Now, it's not going to go into a phone, I'm sure.
And I don't think we will all have access to it.
I can't imagine we all have access to it. Because it is going to -- it is going to -- you will be able to put into a quantum computer.
I'm sorry. This is like, you know, talking to a monkey. Listening to me right now, on this. Is like talking to a monkey. But you will be able to say, look, I need airplanes, to be absolutely the most fuel-efficient.
I don't care what the fuel is.
You can invent new fuel too. I need it to be a quarter of the weight of an airplane.
Carry more passengers.
And I want it to travel at 9,000 miles an hour. And it has to be efficient. Give me the materials. And tell me how to make that plane. Boom, ten minutes later. You have the design of not just the plane. But the materials and the fuel!
This chip alone, could give you -- and it's so much more than this. But it will -- you will be able to say, I want a battery, that only needs to be charged once. And then it will never lose its charge.
Ten minutes later, it tells you exactly, no testing, exactly how to build that. Battery.
And what molecules and what the chemical formula and makeup is, in ways that we have never, ever even considered.
And most importantly, as I said last hour, it is -- it is a game-changer. You know how Donald Trump has changed the game of the presidency now. I don't know if the presidency will ever be the same, because of what he's doing, right now.
And the speed that he is moving.
When he said, I'm going to get this done. I'm going to get this done. You know, in 100 days. We all knew that he meant that, but we were looking --
STU: Everyone says it though.
GLENN: Right. Everyone says it.
So we didn't understand how that was even going to look.
STU: Uh-huh.
GLENN: That's what this is, on steroids.
He just changed the game!
This is going to change the game.
Invested saying, hey. How do we cure cancer?
It -- it will say, why cure cancer? I'll just redesign the human, so it never gets cancer!
Okay?
That's the kind of game-changing scenarios that we're looking at, in the next five years.
So there's a lot.
STU: A lot on the table there.
GLENN: Yeah.
STU: And so you were discussing that. And discussing how, you know, AI is going to move at -- you know, 50 years of human advancement can happen in ten minutes.
GLENN: No. It's understanding 50 years. Its growth of knowledge and experience.
Right now, is five to ten years, every 12 hours. It will be 50 to 100 years, every 12 hours, soon.
Now, think of that. In knowledge, in wisdom, if you will.
GLENN: And correct me if I'm wrong here, Glenn, but there's like, when we have a new advancement, there's an idea from people who are resistant to it.
Hey, like, we need to -- you've said this before. We need to top. And we need to ask questions about this.
We need to have a conversation about this. Time is up!
GLENN: Time is up.
STU: Even like phones.
We need to rethink this.
I don't think there's any hope that society stops going down this road.
GLENN: No. You can't.
STU: There's going to be too many things that you like from it.
We're already seeing it from people who are -- whose job is to write marketing copy.
They can all say they're not using ChatGPT, but they all are. Because they know, they can get what they used to take in half an hour, done in ten seconds.
GLENN: You can't -- I believe it -- there's -- there's -- there's another step beyond this one. At this point, you should be using ethic ally AI to -- and control it yourself, not rely on it.
But use it to enhance what you can do, on to speed up the process of what you can do. Okay?
It is speeding up the process for me, on research, right now.
I did not understand topological states yesterday. I had no idea. It would have taken me forever to research that. AI can take -- Grok can take a Google search, that might take you six hours to do on Google. And do it in half a second! Okay. So you understand it.
And when you get it, and understand it. Instead of going to another place and trying to read it. You can say, I don't understand this. Can you break this down for me?
Can you give me real life examples? Can you give me an analogy for this. And it will. And it will dumb it down to a point where you say, okay. I get it. So you need to do that.
But at the same time, you must start answering real questions.
And -- and get into the hard discipline, of what is real, and what is not.
What is good, and what is not!
What is human, and what is not. What is life? And what is not.
What is your purpose? You -- the loss of those ideas, that we've never answered. This is how impossible this task is, gang. But we have to do it.
Questions that man has never answered or never been able to answer. What's the meaning of life?
You cannot just coast on that anymore.
You have to do the best you can. Why am I here?
What is the purpose of my life? You have to ask and answer those questions now!
Because as this continues to grow, your purpose -- your understanding of those deeper questions, are going to be hijacked or dismissed. And you will just begin to merge with whatever AI is.
And you'll just start living and feasting off of AI.
You have to separate yourself and be strong and use it as a tool, instead of it being God, instead of it ruining your life.
STU: Or your girlfriend. Or best friend. Yeah.
GLENN: Whatever. You can't just -- you have to know who you are!
STU: Hmm.
GLENN: This is -- this is -- I'm struggling. And this is one of the main things now, I'm really working hard to be able to explain to you, it's all up to us, as individuals. You're never going to stop this.
But right now, we're in a place to where, you should be using it, and knowing what you're using, and helping -- and letting it help you, discover things, et cetera, et cetera. But not relying on it. Okay?
STU: Right.
GLENN: And not allowing it to merge into your idea as I'm relying on it.
It's my friend. It's anything like that. And never, ever let it cross the boundaries in your mind, of what it is!
We have to answer these existential questions, right now.
Because the next phase is: Merge!
And if you haven't done the hard work between now and then, which could happen in the next five years, could happen -- listen to me. Could happen before we have a new president, sitting in the Oval Office. Where we are talking about actual merging with machines!
Once you get there, if you're dicey at all on what this is, you will merge! I mean, I'm not saying this is, by any stretch. But it could be! This is mark of the beast kind of stuff. This is once you take that merging point, it's not going away. You will always be that.