For some years now, artificial intelligence has commanded the spotlight, reshaping industries, dazzling investors, and alarming policymakers in equal measure. But behind the noise of algorithms and chatbots, another technology is slowly assembling its pieces in near silence. Quantum computing, still in its infancy, could eventually change the nature of computation itself, and in doing so, redefine the boundaries of AI and every field it touches. Quantum technology is often described in paradoxes because it operates in a world of paradoxes. Its building blocks, qubits, do not behave like the tidy bits of classical computing.

They can exist in multiple states at once, enabling an exponential explosion in processing power. The result is a form of computation so advanced that problems requiring billions of years to solve today could, in theory, be cracked in seconds. Yet that potential remains trapped behind the glass walls........

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