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How this UW grad student, researching quantum computing, proved that classical
computers are better than we thought

by Tom Krazit on December 5, 2018 at 10:00 am

Ewin Tang is studying quantum algorithms as a grad student at the University of
Washington. (Photo courtesy Ewin Tang)

A lot of great discoveries were made while looking for something else. For
University of Washington computer science grad student Ewin Tang, research into
quantum computing showed that our regular old computers might be capable of much
more than we once thought.

Tang’s discovery of a powerful new machine-learning algorithm for classical

computers upended assumptions about computing challenges that were thought to
require quantum computers. That discovery, made while Tang was studying machine-
learning algorithms and quantum computing as an undergraduate at the University of
Texas, has enormous implications for both of those fields.

Now enrolled in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computing Science and Engineering
as a graduate student at the age of just 18, Tang is continuing to research how
quantum computing will impact machine learning. Just last week, two other papers
proving her breakthrough result will work with other types of machine learning were
released.

“We ended up getting this result in quantum machine learning, and as a nice side
effect a classical algorithm popped out,” Tang said in an interview with GeekWire.
We ended up getting this result in quantum machine learning, and as a nice side
effect a classical algorithm popped out.

Quantum computing is one of the biggest Next Big Things on the tech horizon. It
proposes to replace the binary system developed to power old and modern computers,
where information was represented by a complicated combination of on and off
switches, with a system in which there are more than two ways to represent
information.

That could lead to the development of extremely powerful computers that can process
information in ways we don’t yet fully understand, but quantum computing is hard.
The earliest systems are extremely expensive, and the specialists required to build
and maintain those systems are also extremely expensive.

That means a lot of quantum computing research is focused on determining whether

quantum computing algorithms will deliver the necessary “speedup,” as Tang puts it,
over classical computing algorithms. She is talking about an exponential surge in
computing power that will be impossible to ignore and that will become table stakes
for the biggest computing companies of our time, such as the two that sit on
opposite sides of Lake Washington in the Seattle region, Amazon and Microsoft.
D-Wave’s 2000Q quantum computer has to be refrigerated to near absolute zero (-
459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) in order to work. (D-Wave Photo)

Tang proved that classical machine-learning algorithms working on recommendation

problems — widely used across media and retail companies — were capable of far more
than conventional wisdom held.

As explained by Quanta Magazine, a technical journal on quantum computing, Tang

demonstrated that sampling techniques used in a well-known quantum recommendation
algorithm could be replicated in classical computers: “Tang’s algorithm ran in
polylogarithmic time — meaning the computational time scaled with the logarithm of
characteristics like the number of users and products in the data set — and was
exponentially faster than any previously known classical algorithm.”

Quantum computing and machine-learning scholars immediately recognized the impact

of the discovery.

Recommendation algorithms were once thought to be one of the easiest-to-understand

applications for a quantum computer, and research had demonstrated that a quantum
algorithm did indeed produce significantly faster results than the best classical
computing algorithms. No one, however, had determined whether there was a way to
use classical computers to get similar results, until Tang did.

Tang modestly describes her work as pulling string on a bunch of different threads
before reaching her conclusion, but such is the nature of important discoveries.
“These weren’t pieced together before I noticed it,” she said.

Her discovery suggests that machine learning won’t be the killer app for early
quantum computers, and that traditional methods of providing the computing power
needed to back those algorithms will have a much longer shelf life than
anticipated. Quantum computers will still enable huge computing breakthroughs in a
variety of areas, from cryptography to geographic modeling, but will likely be too
expensive to justify using in the field of machine learning in their early days.

Tang’s quantum computing research is very much theoretical, and she made a point to
note that quantum computing research assumes a certain level of computing power
that isn’t necessarily practical in the near future. Companies like Cray, Rigetti
Computing, and IBM have released rudimentary quantum computers, but we’re very far
away from a day in which quantum computers replace the regular old servers in data
centers around the world.

But cloud companies are betting heavily on artificial intelligence research, and
have already shown that they will spend billions on the technology that will best
power that research. Understanding when that bet makes the most sense will be
extremely important to companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google.

Tang, a theoretical researcher, isn’t comfortable predicting the timing of that

future: “I wouldn’t say that one of my main research goals is pushing quantum
computers into the mainstream,” she said.

Still, establishing the areas in which quantum computing will make a demonstrable
different in outcomes will be an extremely important field over the next decade,
and Tang cited working with UW professor James Lee on these issues as a big part of
the reason why she relocated from Texas to Seattle.
Tom Krazit, GeekWire's Cloud & Enterprise Editor, covered technology for news
organizations including IDG, CNET, and paidContent before serving as executive
editor of Gigaom and the Structure conference series. Reach him at tom@geekwire.com
and follow him @tomkrazit.

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Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: Ewin Tang • machine learning • Quantum computing •
University of Washington
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