Quantum futures – how a patchy skills market threatens the need for urgent progress

While AI dominates the hype cycle – with humanoid robots lumbering up on the outside – quantum technology has been quietly evolving in the background.

As such, it offers a refreshing comparison to the hysterical world of AI: the kind of steady, iterative, grown-up technology development that used to typify the IT sector until the arrival of the bro-ligarchs. Remember those days? Identifying real problems and solving them with skill, innovation and good engineering rather than scraping the world’s art to fill the Web with automated bilge.

There is a serious point to that introduction, though. The absence of AI-style hype about quantum technologies – the dearth of futurist claptrap, messianic seers of the singularity, and insane, economy-threatening stock prices – also poses a challenge, because the world values those things more highly than it should. It means that not enough people are developing skills in the quantum realm.

This was the theme of a presentation at a recent Westminster policy conference on quantum opportunities. It came from Dr Rosie Hood, Lead Data Scientist at an organization called the Economic Graph Research Institute on LinkedIn, of which 45 million of LinkedIn’s one billion users are members.

For many, LinkedIn has two primary functions today: first, as a platform for ChatGPT and Copilot to share vapid hot takes that users can’t be bothered to write themselves; and two, to provide data about LinkedIn members. Only the latter is useful, and it provides a rich professional data set: the Economic Graph. Hood explained:

We’ve used it to analyse the quantum workforce, capturing talent, looking at talent pipelines, and the demand transitions into the quantum workforce. The data is global, granular, and in real time. If you start a quantum occupation today, we can surface that in a data set today.

Good news. She then made an interesting point:

We can see that one in four members with a core quantum skill also have an AI skill, so it’s easy to assume there's a lot of adoption there. But if you reverse that, we see that only one percent of members with an AI skill have a quantum skill. That highlights the potential barriers to the adoption of quantum computing and other quantum technologies later

She continued:

We started by looking at how we would define quantum talent: what it means to have it, as well as the key skills that the workforce needs. And then at the career pathways shaping that workforce.We found that quantum talent is a very nuanced workforce. In fact, it’s fractured. It's made up of a lot of occupations and types of roles, like quantum engineers, software engineers, researchers, and physicists. And the skills profile that professionals have is very nuanced too, so it requires a deep understanding of theoretical physics concepts. But it also demands software skills, as well as practical competencies like cryogenics.

And we see that the primary gateway into quantum is higher education: the workforce is very highly educated. Most members in a quantum occupation today have a Doctoral degree, whereas for comparable AI talent, it's more a Master's degree, and for the average LinkedIn member, it's more a Bachelor's degree. And many are educated in Europe. Academia is the key feeder into the industry.

Talent

In the UK, it is no surprise that the main talent clusters are around the big universities, she noted, where Britain routinely claims quantum leadership. Alas, that isn’t really true, she said:

We found that the top five hubs by country make up two-thirds of the quantum workforce, and it is based in, first and foremost – by a long margin – the United States. That’s followed by Germany, the UK in third, and then India and Canada. The talent is largely educated in Europe, but it's definitely employed in the US.

China, it was noted at the conference, is an unknown quantity in this field: reliable investment, start-up, and workforce figures are hard to find, partly because quantum innovations are often protected as state secrets rather than as commercial IP.

But we can assume that, like AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other Industry 4.0 technologies, Beijing is throwing billions of dollars at establishing the market. Assume a top three position, therefore, almost certainly edging out the UK. Meanwhile Singapore is a fast-emerging market too.

Either way, the challenge for the UK and Europe is obvious: how to create local jobs in a sector that is crossing from the theoretical to the practical as you read this. Failure to do so means that the quantum workforce will follow the dollar, assuming, of course, that the US Government hasn’t alienated the world’s talent pool by then, which we must acknowledge is currently a distinct possibility.

But in other ways, the quantum workforce mimics wider tech and STEM trends that, alas, seem impervious to change. Hood explained:

There's a gender gap. Seventy-eight percent of members in a quantum occupation are men. And if we look at skills – at folks that could transition into a quantum occupation but aren't currently in one – 80% of that workforce is male as well.

Plus ça change, eh?

Where to?

Then she added:

Physics is a huge feeder into quantum, but only 0.05 percent of folks on LinkedIn that have a physics degree end up in a quantum occupation. So, there is a leakage after physics. I studied physics myself, so I'm part of that.

But within quantum, where is the talent moving? Hood said:

Maybe you start in quantum computing or quantum sensing, but cybersecurity is a huge application of quantum tech. But only 0.2 percent of cyber professionals have a quantum skill. So, I think the focus now should be on skills and a quantum-literate workforce. That's going to be what boosts companies’ development of quantum technologies. There are folks with these skills in adjacent occupations. And they are waiting on the sidelines to be your quantum workforce.

Part of the event was chaired by George Freeman, Conservative MP and Member of the House of Commons’ Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. He added a helpful postscript to Hood’s presentation:

We're in the most extraordinary global race for quantum science, research, technology, innovation, and sovereignty around the world. I've just got back from a week in Singapore and Hong Kong, and over the last six weeks [he was speaking in December], I've been in the Gulf, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia as UK Trade Envoy. And it's very clear that around the world there is a wall of money coming in from corporations, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, governments… nobody wants to be left behind in the quantum race. And from the point of view of a quantum research base, that is amazing news.

But where does the UK really fit in that global race? We're very good at telling ourselves that we lead in everything, but that is clearly not the case. It's clear to me that other countries are leading in some key areas, and I think we must be open-eyed about where we've got real sovereign advantage.

At this point we should remind ourselves that it was the previous Conservative administration that routinely described Britain as a superpower and world leader in whatever technology was being discussed. But Freeman continued:

Second, we need to think about the applications, the ones in which we can build industrial sovereign strength and leadership. I'm worried, as with AI, that it's going to be a transformational technology, but not convinced how much of quantum the UK is going to be able to own.

I think in encryption, there are some powerful applications in our defence capability and in our defence industrial strategy. We should be looking at that. And cybersecurity generally: the first country, the first actor to have quantum capability, will drive a coach and horses through cybersecurity.

My take

Indeed it will. And this is one reason why quantum is often filed under state secret rather than verifiable patent.

In other ways, I would argue that the quantum technology landscape resembles that of robotics before the AI Spring. In those halcyon, pre-ChatGPT days, robotics’ progress was slow, steady, iterative, grown-up, and sensible, with experts seeking safe, credible, standards-based solutions to complex real-world problems. And that is precisely what those problems still demand today.

But the sudden influx of broligarch cash into humanoid robots and physical AIs, and the self-serving BS and cultish adoration that accompanies it, reveals the challenge we all face in this noisy and dangerous world. Yes, the flood of billions of dollars into robotics is welcome, but the futurist claptrap that comes with it is unbearable.

Hype and nonsense are dangerous: they are counter-productive and short-termist, heightened as they are by the need for rapid investor payback. In this way, they threaten real progress, creating a market that is largely built on promises that can’t be fulfilled for the foreseeable future.

Let’s hope that quantum can avoid all that. In the meantime, brush up your skills, bet on the future, and start a company today. After all, whoever cracks strong encryption first will change the world overnight. It might be best to prepare for that.