Technology, Connected - Why Build a Quantum Video Game With No Quantum Advantage? | Harry Kumar, Moth

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

What would a gamer do with a quantum computer? Or a musician? Harry Kumar, co-founder of Moth Quantum, thinks quantum computing needs creativity to push quantum forwards, so we're going to find out.Moth built Quantum Backrooms, a video game where a quantum computer builds the maze. Each tile on the map is a qubit. The correlation between two neighbouring qubits decides whether a wall stands between them. However, the game shows no quantum advantage and runs no faster than a game on a classical computer. It certainly isn't GTA6. So why build it? Early AI. Image generation no better than a child. But millions of people signed up. That's the step before commercial value. People are creative, they want creative tools. Using quantum for material science and protein synthesis is incredible, but it doesn't bring in the masses. Which is why Harry is waiting for quantum computing's Dylan-goes-electric moment. We also cover:How Atlas, Moth's platform, lets you run an image through a quantum computer without writing code Whether a musician could hear the difference between quantum and classical randomness Which kind of quantum computer makes the best beats, and why Harry won't sayWhy Feynman's idea of a computer that works like nature excites artists Why Harry won't let AI write his first draft Please enjoy the show.--LINKSTry Atlas: platform.mothquantum.comMoth Quantum: mothquantum.comMore quantum episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1kcpzYgKSZ4yVV-xqI1Zd8fAXMsm8g-2 --Thinking on Paper is a long-form interview podcast with Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson. It’s the human story of technology --Chapters(00:00) Introduction to the episode and guests(01:32) Who is Harry Kumar and what is Moth Quantum?(04:18) The concept behind Quantum Backrooms and its inspiration(06:06) The end state in quantum game mechanics and creative mapping(09:58) Quantum advantage and hardware considerations(10:31) Using games to explore quantum mechanics(12:52) Target audience for quantum creative platforms(17:02) Comparison to Unreal Engine and platform versatility(20:33) Quantum shaders and potential in music and visual effects(28:27) Quantum as a new form of artistic expression(36:04) Quantum computing and the nature of creativity(44:52) Autonomous media and AI in creative processes(45:48) How to access and experiment with Moth Quantum's platform--Thinking on Paper:◼ Choose your own technology adventure: https://www.thinkingonpaper.xyz◼ Running a tech conference? Book us to host: https://www.thinkingonpaper.xyz/tech-conference-host-moderators/◼ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinking-on-paper-technology-considered/id1713227258◼ Follow Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfielding99/◼ Follow Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremygilbertson/ 

Now that is the exact kind of experimentation, I think, that leads to the invention of the 808, that leads to the invention of the MOOG. I mean, if we're talking about the history of music and the history of technology and culture, those kinds of moments where someone goes, but what if we unplug that and plugged it into here? And I guess what I'm waiting for right now, I'm waiting to see Dylan goes electric, You know, that moment where someone is super creative takes a quantum computer doesn't have any experience or background and starts plugging things in like that using our platform, runs it on whichever hardware provider they want. We're trying to be as hard or agnostic as possible to an aid or that and starts making really cool things happen.

Disruptors and curious minds, welcome to another episode of Thinking on Paper. My name's Jeremy. This is Mark. We're talking around two of our favorite subjects, I think, today. Who do we have on the show? Kick it off and tell us what we're getting into. Consumer quantum computing, quantum computing and gaming, quantum computing and music. What is happening? Why does it link? Why are we speaking about quantum mechanics, quantum computing and gaming and music? We're going to find out with our very special guest, Harry Kumar, the co-founder of Moth Quantum. You might have seen their backroom's quantum game. You might have been wondering, how does Quantum fit into the creative an arts world. We're going to find out, Harry, welcome to thinking on paper. Thank you for thinking on paper

with us today. It's a pleasure to be here. It's hard to share more about more. Mark, before we start, have you seen backrooms? I've played the game. You haven't seen the film? I don't know what it is, but I haven't seen it, no. So funny story, it went, just super quick story. I went with my kids, they wanted to watch it. I don't know if you've probably been in movies that make your body and your brain feel weird. That one made both of my body and my brain feel weird. almost to the point where I was like, I might want to go, but I can't leave at the same time. So anyway, backroom is very interesting.

Let's start there, Harry, if we can, because you released something really right when that movie came out on the gaming side, and what brought you to kind of grab that as a potential inflection point into the market? Yeah, you know, it's a great question because I had a lot of friends tapping us on the shoulder at that time saying,

how did we guys know back when it was going to be such a big thing and I think it comes from two things one of you know we're a quantum confusing company but we also have a team of creative technologists artists people really you know fascinated by contemporary culture and an even broader sort of community of people who are really part of that internet culture contemporary creative practice sort of well

and we were starting to hear murmurings about bathrooms and the whole internet law around it for quite a while before we thought about making that game. But there was also a sprinkling of luck and serendicity in all of it. We had one of our researchers working on a new paper and he decided that he wanted to build a demo that could work around this paper and really showcase what he'd been working on, what the team had been working on. And the original idea, was actually a mansion style game

where, you know, it's a bit like a haunted house mansion. And just at that moment where the kind of of proof of concept for this game started to be written down on paper, one of our members of our team, I think it was actually

our CTO brought up back to us and said, hold on, this feels like the perfect game mechanic for a back from his game. You know, a world that shits around the walls never stay in the same place. They're almost in superposition. This feels like a kind of spooky backrooms environment.

So it was serenitist that those two can happen at the same time. And then we of course decided to launch at a time that was around the launch of the film. We thought that would attract a bit of excitement and interest. So we're talking backrooms. We're talking about the game that you guys built to demonstrate something that one of your team members was trying to prove in a paper. What were they trying to prove in the paper? And what did you want to demonstrate with this game?

Yeah. So the paper was about something called quantum imaginary tiny evolution. And really broadly about quantum dynamics and leveraging QPUs, quantum processing units to harness their quantum dynamics and apply that to a game mechanic. That was the essence of what we were trying to do. and then we wanted to demonstrate that in a game. So the quantum dynamics, the inherent randomness, indeterminacy, quantum phenomena, emerging from running things on quantum computers today,

utilizing that for something that's engaging in the form of a game mechanic. In this case, you know, the shifting of walls as you move through a space. And the effect that we really achieved in that game was that you're almost exploring the quantum and processor itself, you know, each tile of the grid, each tile of the Mac that you navigate through to try and escape the backrooms, each tile is essentially a cubit. And whether there's a wall or not between one tile and the next tile is determined by the correlations between those two cubits, the relationship they have to one another. And then what we do is we set up an ideal state for that end map,

that, you know, the map, the maze, the configuration of walls. And then we allow a quantum process to kind of evolve towards that state. And so you're really kind of exploring the QPU as it, you know, evolves through this process. So the end state, the ideal end state, that was specifically mapped out to accomplish something

or just a creative endpoint to land on to... Yeah, more the latter. More the latter. you guys might be familiar with this kind of quantum algorithm from something like quantum chemistry, you know, an optimization algorithm trying to optimize towards a ground energy state. It's in this case reappropriated for, you know, the building of a game and game dynamics. But yeah, the end state weed set was one that is creatively defined. And in fact, we just a few weeks ago had a booth that,

GamesCon, which is a big gaming conference in Germany. And we had everyone from kids to people who are part of the quantum industry to game devs coming up to the booth and setting their own ideal lat state, running that on, in this case it was IBM Fez or IBM Miami, and then actually seeing their own quantum backgrounds level created. So yeah, anyone can set the end state, anyone can run the process, anyone can make quantum backgrounds level. So Mark, if this sounds confusing, we're going to point back to a couple of words that you bring up a lot whenever we talk about quantum is like path integral.

So you have everything's interactions, everything is this, having some sort of coherence with this and some kind of interaction with that, but infinite interactions and infinite possibilities. Harry, would you say that this is like being able to move into direction of the room and somehow understand all of the potential options and interactions with all of the pieces and then figuring out, or not figuring out, but snapping into the wave collapse of an optimal version of that interaction? Am I getting too weird? Like, what's happening? No, not getting too weird at all.

I love the way you're thinking. And actually, if I take a step back for a moment, precisely what you've just described there and the way you've articulated that and the way you've turned something you know about, in the quantum industry or the quantum sector into some kind of creative idea is precisely what Moth's trying to do, which is make it possible for people who are not developers at a quantum company, engineers, researchers, make it possible for those people to start thinking

about interesting ways that we can apply quantum. That means a long, Jeremy. I mean, I'm not saying your role. what I'd say is that quantum computing does unlock that that sort of space or something we are excited about

is being able to unlock and process things in a completely different way akin to what you just described what I'm hesitant to say and what Motha's a company is hesitant to claim is that there's any kind of

quantum advantage present in this or that backrooms presents any kind of performance upgrade to a classical developed game, a classically developed game. It's not doing that because the underlying hardware today does not allow for those kinds of speed ups or the solving of intractable computational problems. We know that those will be solved in the future with new generations of hardware,

and we're pointed at least a great number of us at Moth on the research team are pointed towards unlocking and discovering what those new generations of hardware, you know, and Fault Torah and quantum computers, what will be possible then. But the game today is not solving for an optimization

problem and providing a performance speed up or anything of the sort. It is, however, and I think this is where we weren't wrong in how you described it, it is allowing you to situate yourself within a gaming world that is governed by quantum dynamics, by the things

you described. And those, you know, things like indeterminacy, randomness, the dynamics of a quantum system are present in the game that you're exploring. So are you using the game higher level? Are you using the game to explore quantum mechanics as much as you are, as the player would use quantum mechanics to explore the game of backrooms? I'd say that's a tool. I'd say that's a good way of.

looking at here. I mean, Moth is not a company that is focused on building games or developing games. We made quantum backrooms, but what we've really been focused on over the last couple of years and what we're actually just this week started releasing to our alpha user group is a platform, a platform that was used to make quantum backgrounds, but that anyone could use to make their own quantum game. So that is a set of tools. and, you know, providing the capability for someone to play with quantum and that's abstracted level. And that's what we're focused on building as opposed to games. Now, quantum backgrounds was a really great test for us to try out the platform,

see how it integrates with other existing tools on the classical side as well, and really show the world what's possible to make with our platform. It's kind of, I mean, Mark, you might be more familiar with the idea of Blue Peter, you know, the TV show that was on when I was a child. And something that always came up in that show was here's one I made earlier. And Backrooms is kind of one of those. I can't believe I've just referenced Blue Peter on a podcast. You would, what the hell is you, Peter? I'll explain after the show, Joe.

Don't go there. Yeah, I can't believe I've gone there. But the idea really being that like we've got a platform that can be used to make games. It can be used to make music production tools. It can be used to make almost anything you'd like that uses a QPU. And it makes that easy for someone to do even without quantum experience. And quantum backgrounds is just an example of one of the things you could make. I've played quantum backgrounds.

I haven't played GTA6. It's not out yet. But who's this for? Because a teenager and adult, anybody who is interested in making games, this doesn't feel to me like I'm going to make a quantum game. I could go on, I could use AI. I could go on an app store and build it brick by brick in a classical sense very easily, almost plug and play. Who's this for? So the platform that we've built or quantum backgrounds?

Both. Yeah. So, I mean, quantum backrooms is for. Anyone who likes games, who likes the backrooms genre and is interested in quantum. So, you know, we've had kids coming up to our booth at Gamescom. We've had people from across the kind of creative technology scene being really excited by it. And it could even be for the general public. It's a game that's playable on any browser anywhere and is super accessible in that way.

The platform we've built that made it possible to make quantum backgrounds is really pointed towards in the first place creative people. We've got people who make music plug-ins, but we've also got musicians who don't know how to code, but would like to process music using a quantum process. We've got game devs, as well as gamers, who are part of our Discord community and trying out the games that other people are building using our platform. And in theory, one of the easiest ways that you can interact with our platform, which is called Atlas, by the way, is you could log onto the web platform. You could go to one of our engines, which is an image-specific engine. You could drop a JPEG or a PNG into that engine, move a couple of sliders, press run, and you can get an output that has run either on an emulator or on real quantum hardware without doing.

any coding. So in that sense, it could be used by anyone who wants to see what an image looks like when they run it on a quantum computer and run a certain set of processes. So in that sense, we're trying to open up the aperture to as many people as possible. And really, you know, when you look at the quantum industry, you guys have had plenty of guests on talking about quantum before, you know, it's really been confined to a very small, subsection of people, a very narrow demographic. And those people are concerned with problems like quantum chemistry, cryptography, cyber security, farmer problems.

And there's a broad range. And there's no doubt that that work will lead to real world impact. But at the same time, the quantum industry and quantum computers themselves are sometimes described as a solution looking for a problem, right? We know we've got these computers. we can see that the timelines are lining up and that they will reach a point in the next few years where they can do things that cannot be simulated classically.

And yet at the same time, we only have this narrow set of problems that we know they'll be useful for. From my perspective, it's like we will only unlock that full imagination space for new applications of quantum computing. when we have a broader set of people engaged. And I don't think this is a wild hypothesis. I mean, if you'd asked a classical computer scientist in the 1940s or 50s,

what will a computer be used for in 10, 15, 50 years time? None of them would have said, we're going to have something like a video call technology, or maybe some of them would have done. But probably very few would have predicted Twitch, or generative video you know the broad application space

only really unlocks when you have the public engaged when you have a broader spectrum of people ideating about what this technology could be used for and so for us at Moth

for me I think it's let's break down that barrier and start a new phase of discovery this is almost like a like a Roblox or a Unity engine using quantum in the mix to kind of play around with. Is that close? Is that a bad analogy?

No, it's not a bad analogy. I think we aren't confined to a single vertical or creative technology space. So, I mean, we often make the comparison to like epic games. So the unreal engine comparison is good. You know, epic games make Fortnite. but they also deliver and ship to the world Unreal Engine, which is a tool that can be used to make games. So on the one hand, they build the games.

On the other hand, they ship their own games, but also many, many more people ship games that used Unreal Engine. So in that sense, there's a comparison to be made. What I'd say is with Atlas, this platform we're delivering an API that comes along with it, we built it in a way that can be so generalized to do. different domains that you could take something that we've built. In fact, let's talk about the specific thing we built used for quantum backgrounds.

Quantum graph. Now, this process could be applied to a, you know, a music plugin. You could re-sequence music using this quantum process. You could also apply it to images or video. Or you could even do something really wild and say, take. a sequence of DNA and run that through, set that as your end parameter and run the process on that. We want to allow people to be as creative as possible. And so we're trying not to constrain people to specific media domains, specific applications. Perfect. Perfect. That's it.

So my mind's kind of rolling now. So I think about like you mentioned music, I think about DAWS and logic and pro tools and all of that and you have plugins in those that affect the audio in a certain way. So what does quantum do? What could quantum do to make a reverb plug in more fun and more engaging and more, I don't know, what does quantum do to a reverb plug in? I mean, you know, there's so many different ways you could attack that. And in a way, my call to action to the prolific vide coders in the world,

as well as the plugin creators would be go tell us how we can make a revoke plugin that uses quantum dynamics. I mean, there was, I think, someone on our science team recently was looking at one of these engines we've built for 3D design. Now, this is a kind of shader plugin. I don't know if you're familiar with Blender, for example, you know, 3D software. Now, a shader is used to kind of render the texture of a surface in 3D environments. Now, one of the things we'd observed is that actually it's really hard to render iridescence in a way that is like kind of physics real or accurate to that iridescence in the real world. You know, think, you know, oil in a puddle, you know, when you're at a gas station or petrol station for us, Mark. and you're seeing that shimmer in the puddle

that's coming from that strange combination of oil mixed in with water. It's actually quite hard to produce. So we've built this shader application. We call it the entanglement shader that calculates the coefficients of light as they hit this complex material and it produces this iridescence effect. Now we built that as an app that you can use in Blender,

but on our platform, we're also going to, to provide it as what we're calling a core engine, which means that we leave the processing, the pre-processing, the post-processing, you know, to you, to you the user. And someone suggested the other day that why don't we try and turn this into a reverb plugin? Like, what about using a shader at all that's been designed for a shader and trying to turn that into a reverb plugin? Now that is the exact kind of experimentation, I think, that leads to the invention. of the 808 that leads to the invention of the Moog.

I mean, if we're talking about the history of music and the history of like technology and culture, those kinds of moments where someone goes, well, what if we unplug that and plugged it into here? And I guess what I'm waiting for right now, we spoke about music in the preamble. I'm waiting to see Dylan goes electric, you know, that moment where someone's super creative takes a quantum computer, doesn't have any experience or background, and starts plugging things in like that,

using our platform, runs it on whichever hardware provider they want. We're trying to be as hardware agnostic as possible to enable that, and starts making really cool things happen. Harry, have you ever run across the name Richard Devine before? I have indeed. In fact, it's really funny you bring him up.

He actually came up in conversation yesterday. Super talented guy. And our CTO, Spencer, is based out of New Lab at New York. Spencer previously founded a company called Physical Synthesis. And they built acoustic synthesizers. One in particular called Cicada. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, Richard Devine worked with them on that project. Yeah, so Mark, he's a mod synth genius, like well-known creator.

And there's also a guy Sam Cape, who I need to get you introduced to. So Sam, you can cut this out later, Mark, if you want, but I got to say it. So Sam created the cryptographic math that in $20 bills in the States, there's that little stripe that makes the $20 bill valid and non-counterfeitable. But he's also a synth guy and just a wizard. Like, these dudes should like know who you are and they should be playing in your sandbox, man, for sure. I mean, that would be amazing. It's exactly the, exactly the sort of engagement we want. I mean, and I'll make the point again, I think the quantum industry needs this, you know.

I think the- Dylan goes quantum. Yeah. Dylan goes quantum. Is this, so listening to you speak a new 808, a 303. So this is a new musical instrument in a way, because you can get a rea-a-pedal and you can alter a revert pedal. and you can alter a Vero pedal in other ways. But this is giving creative musicians

the opportunity to discover something new, a new way to look to play. Would it be right to say harnessing the randomness, the serendipitous randomness of nature? I mean, is that something that they could do? I mean, what are they getting that they couldn't get elsewhere? This is one of the ones.

of the questions we get most often and it is you know there's a few ways to answer so that the first thing is we will have like an entropy engine and a QRNG engine on our platform and I actually think that will be attractive to a lot of creative people musicians for example producers that we engage with and one of them is someone who a long time collaborator called Ilar and I know that Ilar will reach for the QRNG sequencer that can be built using our platform and we'll see, you know, we'll input a sequence of notes and see as those get reshuffled and randomized using real quantum computation. Now, the thing is, is I think that will be really exciting to creative people. But we have to remember that if you presented all three of us with a QRNG versus

a classical random number generator, we wouldn't be able to tell with the naked eye the difference between those two things. And you could make the same argument for using quantum in that way in music production. You're not going to be able to tell the difference unless you're told. Now, you could argue that that means,

like, why should we do things with quantum computers today? Because we know that the quantum advantages will come with later iterations of hardware, a bit later generations of hard work. But actually, we believe that you can do already much more than just randomness or, you know, leveraging the non-deterministic nature of quantum state. We think there's a lot more there than just that. And that's the first thing.

But the second thing is that getting creative engagement now, even if it's doing things that you could replicate classically, is probably, arguably, what are the, only things you can do with quantum computing today running on real quantum hardware today where someone finds it valuable. I mean, this is, I think, a really key part of the Moth thesis. If you look back at 2016, an AI development at that point, you know, we've just seen AlphaGo from Deep Mind, Google Deep Dream had come out. I don't know if you remember the kind of images that were being produced between 2016 and 2020,

they were like seriously cursed images, you know, you'd proxed a generous today on odd, or you see this Google Deep Dream stuff, they looked like something out of a, you know, a bad trip or some kind of nightmare. And yet,

that was what attracted creative people to them. You know, a close member of our sort of closed alpha group is a guy called Terran as broad. And in 2016, he made a film called Blade Runner Auto-encoded, where he took, I think it was frame by frame, the film Blade Runner, and using machine learning, re-rendered those frames. And it created this really spooky film that looks like a, you know, a machine's nightmare of Blade Runner. Now, at that moment in time, AI was not commercially useful. It wasn't, you know,

No one was thinking, I'm going to drop my Photoshop subscription, going to drop the Adobe Suite or whatever their creative tool production was. But, you know, Open AIs, Dali did the same thing in 2020 or 2021. They released these images out to the world. They were super janky and weird. And yet a million people signed up to the waitlist to pay for that tool, right? So we're talking about a completely different like axes of value. and value creation.

Now, some people could describe that as sort of novelty, and that's one way of looking at it. I see it as the step that comes before the real commercial value of quantum computers. And I also see it as one of the most valuable things we could do today. And I guess personally, as someone who comes from a creative background, I'm really excited to see the kind of emergent aesthetics, the kind of emerging cultural artifacts, that come from people playing the quantum show.

It's like pop-heart and punk and rock and grunge and jazz and emerged from these news forms that at the beginning were seen were labelled alien. You meant you said the word, I can't remember what the word, what's the quantum industry saying about you? How are you being received when you travel the world and you're faced with the PhDs from IBM and IonQ and there here?

Yeah. So, I mean, we've got. really good relationships with the quantum hardware partners. And, you know, I think increasingly as we start to boast the biggest user base, I don't think it will be long from now, that MOT has the biggest engaged user base in the quantum industry, running probably the most number of jobs on the QPU out of anyone out there. I think that's possible.

IBM has a lot, they on their, like, six and a million, a million? Engaged users is where I, is where I, I draw that caveat, but maybe we won't reach that number. But the point is, is I think we will have at least one of, if not the most engaged, active user base in the quantum sector. And I think the hardware partners will find that beneficial. I mean, we're running the same circuits, different circuits, on quantum devices, on a plurality of quantum devices,

across modalities. We're actually able to collect a lot of data and information that is valuable to the development of these machines. We're also kind of testing and pushing them to their limits. And there's a kind of, you know, I might call it an unintended consequence

because it's something we're interested in, but it's certainly not the priority of what we're doing. But quantum bathrooms almost served as like a benchmarking test. We ran this on devices from a number of different hardware providers. And by the end of that process, our team was able to identify

the hardware used based on the levels that they produced, I think that's a really cool, on intensive consequence. And I think over time, especially as we advance the next generation of devices, you know, we'll see that value appreciated even more so by those hardware partners.

I mean, it's really important to moth that we're as close to the metal as possible in that way. We need to be able to anticipate the outcome, generations of hardware, prepare for those. And like I said, a lot of our team is focused not on making call and creative applications today, but on uncovering and preparing for the most sort of impactful and valuable applications

are contributing in the future. So being close to the metal is important for that. I'm going to ask you a technical question in a non-technical way. Which modality makes the best beats? which modality is the best for any aspiring musician wanting to get creative with quantum spin cubits of course just like the record player man do you know what i there has to be your mark spin cubits has to be come on that would be such a good advert yeah do you know what i'm um i'm not going to give an answer to that and the reason

is is that i kind of want people to go and test that i think my my intuition is not valuable here. And the second thing I'd say is that we're just starting to see this new generation of quantum applications with our first alpha users and, you know, playing with our platform.

In the last week, there have been like, I think six or seven new quantum music tools created that ping our API every time they run, that run either on emulation or on real quantum hardware. And I've kind of been keen to see where, you know, me that question in a month.

Can we, can we ask you what type of qubits you're using in your systems or is that more of a something you want to hold tight? That's okay. Do you know what? I think I will not, I won't respond to that one now, but again, maybe in a future conversation. No, all good. All good.

So let's dig into quantum a little bit more. Help people understand randomness a little bit and how a classical computer treats randomness, because it's actually really not randomness. Like all classical is largely deterministic, right? But it can appear random and explain what advantage the quantum version of randomness provides what you guys are building. And when can I have it on a Spotify playlist? Okay. I love the follow-up question.

No, look, I should say that my band-fram is not as a physicist or a computer scientist, quantum information. So I'm not the best person to answer. questions about explaining the underlying mechanics of these systems. We've got an incredible science team, an amazing engineering team led by our CTO, James, who was mentioned earlier, our CSO has an amazing team as well. So they would be best positioned to give you good answers on that. Yeah, so we don't have to go into the hyperweeds of it, but isn't there something there to demonstrate the value of what you're doing versus what classical computing can do because the way quantum addresses randomness is different than the way classical

addresses randomness. That's what I was kind of getting at with like, no, no, but I know, I'm very, I'm very happy to respond to that. Classical systems are essentially built, classical computers are built on, you know, human logic, on binary systems, on zeros and ones. And quantum computers are completely fundamentally different in that they are leveraged. quantum mechanics, quantum phenomena, and a kind of different system of logic. And, you know, this underlying difference in the way that quantum computers are built and computed with gives rise to these different computational forms. And one of those is, you know, non-sudo-randomness, real randomness.

You know, classical computers can only produce pseudo-randomness. And, you know, until now, you know, there were other ways of, of producing real randomness. I remember here in that Cloudflare has a wall of lava lamps that is used as their source of entry. I thought that was cool. I don't know if it's true.

But there are other ways that essentially leveraging and harnessing natural systems to produce randomness and indeterminacy. But a quantum computer has that bait to because you're computing with nature. And I mean, this was what Richard Feynman

in his lecture in his lecture in the 1980s described as the kind of inception of quantum computers. You know, if you want to simulate nature, if you want to compute like nature, you'd have to use a computer that operates on the logic of nature. And that's what a quantum computer is. And again, I think for the creative user, the mere fact that you are doing something that interfaces with a natural system that is not confined to the realm of human logic,

and, you know, binary systems, but is actually leveraging quantum phenomena. I think that alone, I mean, I've seen it. That alone is enough to excite people and entice them into the quantum round. Love that. It's such a huge thing to think about for us, thinking on paper and our audience. We speak a lot about creativity and where does that inspiration come from? and everyone is aware of Rick Rubin now and creativity is kind of channeling the whispers of the universe with your antennas.

And this is such an interesting way to think about what quantum computing can give the create to the creative act when we're just bombarded with the heavy-duty science of quantum and what it can do for material science and what it can do for protein folding to think about it in this way is a breath of fresh air for me personally. All right, here's my hot take. I totally agree.

So we're going to get back together in like five or six years. And you're going to have, Harry, you're going to have done so much with this and enabled quantum in such a way that you're actually going to write a paper and it's going to point back that the creative process is inherently quantum and here's the proof.

I love that. I mean, you know, there's, at some point we were into Face Six. with a researcher who is exploring the idea that music is inherently quantum. Now, rather than try and paraphrase his work, I'll point you to Rakat B. Abdisagin, who is a fascinating researcher, whether or not that ends up to be true. I think it's a brilliant question to ask, you know,

what things out there are inherently quantum, which things are, what are the quantum native problems to solve with quantum computing, but also what are the quantum native problems to start thinking about with a quantum perspective? I mean, quantum computing and quantum mechanics forces us to entirely reorient the way that we perceive the world, understand the world, and think. And if that process of unlearning, I like to call it unlearning, Great word. Yeah.

If that doesn't give rise to new creativity and new forms of expression, then I don't know what will. And there is something somewhat intuitive about the idea that we can encode creative meaning in some kind of quantum state. That's one for sci-fi.

That's a comment from me and not the mothed research. Creativities at the forefront of everyone's mind as we get further and further into this AI world. And maybe this is the counter argument. Maybe this is the counter strike to that giving up of creativity. And maybe this could prove or this could be used to think about, can AI really be creative?

And what maybe quantum could help with that creativity? Maybe give it to the machines or make sure that machines never get it, which is my way of leading into the, crossover question, Harry, because I'm aware that we are limited by our time, that entropy is approaching the end of thinking on paper. And we must close this out. But we will be back and we'll take you up on your, and we'll love to take this conversation further because we barely scratched the surface, I think of like, it takes 40 minutes for our brains to start working. So the crossover question, the follow over question, the carryover question, sorry, left by our last

guest for you. So our last guest was Nathan Silvernail, CEO, planted. And his question for you was, which activity in your day-to-day life has, have you replaced with AI? And the follow-up to that, which is perhaps more interesting, what would you turn back or turn off the AI is being used for today? Yeah, it's, I mean, that second part is, is such an interesting question, one that I would oscillate in my feelings towards. But to the first question, you know, I try not to let AI replace my thinking. That's really vital.

I think one of the, I forget who to attribute this to, but I read a blog post, early doors, I think chat GPT3. And someone wrote a post about how they were really concerned about the death of the first draft. And it really struck accord with me because I studied mathematics and philosophy at university. I remember staying up late at night

right up until the deadlines, writing my philosophy papers. And the first draft was always like 60% of the effort, if not more. And then you get that first draft and you start going through it, you start then culling, you know, the bits that you can get rid of, you start rethinking aspects of it.

But that first draft, where so much of the thinking goes on. And the concern at that time is that AI would replace the first draft, that you go, here's the idea, or maybe you even outsource the original idea, come up with a cool idea for an essay about AI and culture. And then that process of drafting that original idea, that human developed idea, is gone.

And then it also renders the mind less capable of being, creative of being interrogative, of challenging ideas and of thinking original thoughts. And so I know that's not an answer to the question. That's what I don't use AI for. What I do use AI for is, it's like the more administrative stuff. You know, I don't want to spend hours and hours now as going through expense receipts, you know, the boris things. And then I will admit I have been dabble it with Fide Coding tools. I think it's hard to not see ClawCode as the

most significant development or the most significant app since Google search. I mean, we may have opinions about whether it's a good thing for the world or not. What I would say is that it's impossible to not admit that Claude CodCode in particular for coding things is an extraordinary development in technology,

the ability for a whole new part of the public, you know, a whole new, and, you know, the majority of, probably of society to go from not being able to code, not being able to build new computational technologies, to being able to. Now, obviously, there's all those caveats of, you know, someone generates an app that is 100,000 lines of code more than it should be. because the code's not there,

but I'm sure we'll get there. And of course, other AI LLMs are available. But that to me is something I find exciting. It's something I've started using. But otherwise, my answer is the more administrative stuff. I couldn't agree with you more on the first draft. And every time somebody posts about ideation and using AI for ideation,

a little piece of my inner creative drive dies. I'll echo that too. We talk about this a lot, Harry, on the show. And in fact, thinking on paper comes from a quote from William Zinzer that if you could write, you can about anything you can think. It's thinking you're able to think using your hands on a piece of paper, the friction of stuff coming out of your head. And sometimes you've got to grind through the BS.

Like sometimes part of the brilliance of the 60% of. of the first draft is like running up against this roadblock of like, man, this doesn't feel right. And all of a sudden, boom, there it goes. And it's like, it's brilliant. And I'm worried about that too. I'm worried about people losing that ability as well. Mm-hmm. I'd, um, if I can pose a question to the next, uh, the next, uh, the next, uh, gas, related to

this topic, I'd ask, do you believe you could enjoy? a piece of media, music, art, film that was generated solely by an autonomous system. I have my own answer to that. So clarification on that. Yeah. Fully autonomous, no one prompting it, just it somehow getting good at this from the loops. Autoculture. Autoculture is what I'll describe it as.

Okay. Great question. you be a consumer of alter culture? Great question. Harry, this has been a pleasure. Like Mark said, I think they're just scratching the surface on some of this stuff. You know, next time Mark will tell you why he thinks consciousness is the wave collapse, but we'll leave that for another time.

I think I can say it is just speculation. But this has been a lot of light. It's been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. And I'd love to come back another sign and get a scratch, even deeper. into the sort of dive into the quantum realm. If I, if I can. Where can people play with your quantum machines?

So platform.mothquantum.com. That is our platform. It's in alpha user phase right now. It's called Atlas. You'll find it on our website as well, mothquantum.com. We've opened it up to a wider group of alpha users. you can right now if you install it run things on an emulator bring your own key and to the people who are using it the most we're offering free compute credits and we're also on the brink of announcing a few things like an open call for creative projects and we also have a hackathon online next week the moth hack with some challenges and prizes up for graphs make your best image with a quantum computer make a quantum computer make a quantum some game, you know, across the spectrum.

Make it weird. Please sign up to the platform, sign up to our Discord and, you know, fire away what you've been making. We want to see all the creativity coming from the community. Outstanding. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Harry.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you. And until next time, be disruptive. stay curious for Pete's sake keep thinking on paper the first draft is the most important