Scott Aaronson is a professor at UT Austin, director of its Quantum Information Center, and previously a professor at MIT. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers and computational complexity theory more generally.

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00 – Introduction

05:07 – Role of philosophy in science

29:27 – What is a quantum computer?

41:12 – Quantum decoherence (noise in quantum information)

49:22 – Quantum computer engineering challenges

51:00 – Moore’s Law

56:33 – Quantum supremacy

1:12:18 – Using quantum computers to break cryptography

1:17:11 – Practical application of quantum computers

1:22:18 – Quantum machine learning, questionable claims, and cautious optimism

1:30:53 – Meaning of life