Smart Cities May Be Best Business Case For Quantum Computing

Quantum computing (QC) for smart cities may be the best business use of QC technology according to this INSEAD blog posting. The author says quantum computing is best suited for cases that involve massive data processing, but don’t require 100 percent precision in computations. Future smart cities represent a context in which those kind of problems will abound.

Artificial intelligence algorithms, sitting under the hood of every smart car, would solve the local transportation problems. They would navigate the streets by constantly scanning the car’s environment to determine whether a car should stop or accelerate at the nearby intersection. Yet, such local decisions might not be optimal on a larger scale. Thus, the city might want to have a quantum computer to optimise the city-wide traffic flows. The system could give different suggestions to different cars to shorten their travel time. Even if a given forecast – e.g. the next five cars should detour via Street A to unclog Street B – is only 98 percent accurate, it would still be good enough on average.

Other possible uses of quantum computing include the optimisation of electrical grids: This is another problem that requires massive computational power, but can tolerate small errors.

Blog author is Andrew Shipilov, a Professor of Strategy and Akzo Nobel Fellow at INSEAD.