Amazon AI exec predicts first 'commercially useful' quantum computers in 5-7 years

The first "commercially useful" quantum computer will be available in the next five-to-seven years, Amazon 's top artificial intelligence executive told CNBC on Wednesday. Peter DeSantis, who is a few months into his role leading a new Amazon organization focused on AI models, chips and quantum computing, said the technology will then grow in a similar way to the advancement of semiconductor capabilities. "I actually do believe, over the next five-to-seven years, we're going to start to see the first commercially useful small-scale quantum computers," DeSantis told CNBC. "From there, we're going to see something that looks a lot like Moore's Law, where they're going to get bigger and bigger every year, and they're going to be able to tackle more and more interesting problems," he added. Moore's Law is the idea that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every two years, leading to more powerful semiconductors over time. DeSantis' comments are the first timeline forecasts delivered by Amazon regarding useful quantum computing. Quantum computing proponents claim the technology will be able to solve problems that current computers can't. In classical computing, information is stored in bits. Each bit is either a one or zero. Quantum computing uses quantum bits or qubits which can be zero, one or something in between. "One of the misnomers is a quantum computer is going to be a faster computer, that's not it at all. …