Using computers to process natural human language is notoriously difficult, so perhaps its not surprising that researchers are turning to quantum computers. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Bob Coecke of Cambridge Quantum Computing explains why natural language processing is “quantum native” – which makes it a perfect candidate for an early practical application of quantum computing.

Also in this episode, Ana Širovic – a marine biologist at Texas A&M University at Galveston – takes us on a sonic journey through the oceans, discussing the many sounds made by marine creatures. She also talks about the threats posed to nature by sounds related to human activity.

Coecke has recently published two preprints on quantum natural language processing on arXiv. They are “Foundations for near-term quantum natural language processing” and “Grammar-aware question-answering on quantum computers”.