2026-08-04
5 分钟Hello, this is Alok Jha, host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
It is not just artificial intelligence that is sparking hopes of an imminent productivity miracle.
Quantum computing, another long-promised technology, is also making progress and attracting serious interest.
Investment in startups in the field rose sixfold in 2025 to $13 billion, according to McKinsey, a consultancy.
Both startups and tech titans are racing to exploit the technology.
In May, the Trump administration pledged $2 billion to take equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies.
Quantum computers exploit the weird physics of quantum mechanics
to perform some types of calculations at breathtaking speed.
Jobs that would take ordinary classical computers billions of years might be polished off in just a few hours.
But whereas AI is a general-purpose technology that promises to transform many fields of endeavor,
the mathematical superpowers of quantum computers are likely to help in only a few areas,
such as making possible rigorous digital simulations of complex physics and chemistry.
For many tasks, quantum computers will offer no improvement at all over cheaper, ordinary machines.
In one area, though, they are certain to make a world of difference and perhaps turn out to be destructive.
The security and privacy of global commerce and communication depend on forms of encryption
that would take classical computers billions of years to crack.
A powerful quantum computer might break such codes in just a few minutes using an algorithm