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Background
Wootton’s academic journey includes a doctorate at the University of Leeds and a postdoctoral position at the University of Basel, where he later became a lecturer. His research has primarily focused on quantum error correction, but also included topics such as topological quantum computation and entanglement theory. Over the past 15 years, he has consistently published influential papers on quantum research, particularly on topological quantum error correcting codes and their decoders.
Wootton made headlines in 2017 by creating the first game for a quantum computer, titled Cat/Box/Scissors. At IBM, he played a crucial role in developing Qiskit (Quantum Information Science Kit) and was actively involved in the outreach team.
His unique approach of integrating gaming with quantum education has not only made quantum principles more accessible but also fostered a vibrant global community. He has spearheaded numerous quantum game jams, public hackathons, and nurtured an ecosystem that has grown from a solo initiative into a thriving community. His work has been cited in academic papers more than 2,200 times.
“There are many problems that we can look to solve for computer games with quantum computers, and that’s what we’re really aiming to do,” Tomassini said.
As an example, the company is looking at using quantum computers for procedural content generation. Such content uses AI to generate content for games in a procedural way, such as creating variations on trees in a forest.
“This is something that is already done with conventional digital computers. The problem is you have to find ways around the very hard computational problems that you would probably do if you had infinite computational power,” Tomassini said. “People are very good and very creative at coming up with ways of designing procedural algorithms dealing with these constraints. But with the additional tools that we provide, using quantum computing and solving hard constraint problems or optimization problems, then they are going to be doing much better things. And I think there’s going to be a real shift.”
Games won’t be the only industry that benefits from quantum computing, for sure. But Wootton has been working on the intersection of quantum and creativity for a decade now.
“We’re definitely the first company” in the quantum gaming space, Tomassini said. “James has been pioneering quantum applications for gaming. That technology is starting to mature to a level where we’re already designing these foundational algorithms and models to solve these types of problems that will be horizontal across the creative industries. So we’re looking at the intersections of these technologies.”
Tomassini said the company is looking at music, gaming and art.
Origins
In terms of an origin story, Wootton said he went to a conference on quantum mechanics, and he was asked to think about his research and how to bring it to the public.
“I thought the best way for my research at that time on error correction was to make a citizen science game. So that was the first time I combined what I was doing in quantum computing with gaming, with the idea of doing outreach for education and for bringing people into the science,” Wootton said. “And then, as the field has progressed, we got quantum computers on the cloud from IBM initially.”
Now, many others are interested in the technology. At the moment, Tomassini said the company has a lot of quantum computing people on its staff, and not quite as many on the gaming side. They’re working on a proof of concept with large corporations. These products that Moth is working on are more like tools for creative people to use — artists, game developers and musicians, Wootton said.
“We’re hoping to announce some of those soon, and that will get a lot of the expertise from the game side interested,” Tomassini said.
In addition to procedural content generation, the company is also looking into uses of generative AI and quantum computing as well in gaming.
“We hope to actually partner with these companies on long term deployments and technologies,” Tomassini said. “This year, we will be releasing one of our first models that is basically generative AI for music that leverages quantum computing technology. It generates music via a prompt.
Wootton noted that traditional computers have to train on a massive amount of data in order to produce AI. If quantum computing were used instead, he thinks that the AI could be achieved with a lot less computing power.
“We see ourselves as embedded in the field of procedural generation as a whole,” said Tomassini.
He noted his company would like to meet up with smart folks in the game industry, like the team at Hello Games, which has generated procedural content for No Man’s Sky for the past eight years.
“At a very broad level, I think the ideal procedural generation algorithm would be where you set some constraints and then you ask the computer to find something that satisfies constraints. So this is a constraint satisfiability problem, and these are very computationally expensive in general,” Wootton said. “There is a way for quantum computers to solve these faster than conventional digital computers can in general.”
Another example is Minecraft. You get that loading screen when you generate a world at the beginning. It procedurally generates the world that you then go and explore. This work could be done by quantum computers.
“Gaming is obviously where at the moment we’re focused, at least in the long term that James mentioned. But algorithmic content generation is just at its start in this industry. We think it will dominate content creation in the long term,” Tomassini said.
Wootton published papers on the topic of procedural generation in games. Interest has been coming in from game companies and metaverse companies, Tomassini said.
Moving to the next level
Wootton said that Moth is building a team primarily at Basel, Switzerland, where he is based.
“We’re going to bring in scientists with a quantum physics background or quantum computing background,” Tomassini said. “We’re going to bring in software engineers because we want them. We want to not just make papers and horrible scientist code that they want to use, but also things that people can then begin to use.”
He added, “We are betting on and aiming for quantum advantages. So we’re aiming for getting real unique results out of our quantum computers at the point where they can run textbook algorithms. But at the moment, we can run things on the devices that we have now, and we can do interesting things and get people engaged with the technology.”Tomassini said that the first computer game was Spacewar, which came out in 1962. Tomassini said his team is working on the quantum equivalent of Spacewar. Wootton hopes that new technology will debut around 2030.
As for quantum error correction, Wootton said there has been a lot of progress lately.
“We’re making great progress, but it’s still going to be a few good years until it turns into something that we can use on the other side,” Tomassini said.
Tomassini expects that we’ll have quantum data centers in the future. It may be, however, a very long time before quantum computing makes its way into consumer devices. Theoretically, however, a quantum computer in a data center could provide computing power to a game device via the cloud.
Tomassini said that the company is aiming to get a major product out this year.
“We think people will be very excited about that this year,” he said.
Tomassini said that Wootton’s departure from IBM is a momentous thing in the quantum computing industry.
“It’s a big moment for the industry as a whole,” Tomassini said. “It signifies a maturity for the business.”
