The New Stanford–Carnegie Study: Hybrid AI Teams Beat Fully Autonomous Agents by 68.7%

December 1, 2025

Ralph Losey, December 1, 2025 (25 minute read)

For years, technologists have promised that fully autonomous AI Agents were just around the corner, always one release away, always about to replace entire categories of work. Then Stanford and Carnegie Mellon opened the box and observed the Agents directly. Like Schrödinger’s cat, the dream of flawless autonomy did not survive the measurement.

An artistic representation of a robot emerging from an open box, with digital particles dispersing away from it, symbolizing the concept of AI and technology.
Observation reveals fragile AI Agents. All images in this article are by Ralph Losey using various AI tools.

What did survive was something far more practical: hybrid human–AI teaming, which outperformed autonomous Agents by a decisive 68.7%. If you care about accuracy, ethics, or your professional license, this is the part of the AI story you need to understand.

A digital graphic showing a bar chart representing 68.7% performance improvement, set against a blue background with circuit-like patterns.
Humans can work much better if augmented by AI Agents but the Agents alone fail fast.

1. Introduction to the New Study by Carnegie Mellon and Stanford

The Mellon/Stanford report is important to anyone trying to integrate AI into workflows. Wang, Shao, Shaikh, Fried, Neubig, Yang, How Do AI Agents Do Human Work? Comparing AI and Human Workflows Across Diverse Occupations (arXiv, 11/06/25, v.2) (“Mellon/Stanford Study” or just “Study”).

Just to be clear what we mean here by AI Agent, Wikipedia provides a generally accepted defination of an Agent as “an entity that perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously to achieve goals, and may improve its performance through machine learning or by acquiring knowledge.”

So, you see most everyone thinks of AI Agents and autonomy as synonymous. The Study bursts that bubble. It shows that Agents today need a fair amount of human guidance to be effective and fail too often, and too fast without it.

A split-image illustration contrasting the 'fantasy' of a futuristic, human-like robot on the left with the 'reality' of a more cartoonish robot struggling with an error on the right. The left side features a sleek, metallic robot, while the right side depicts a confused robot holding a document with an error message, emphasizing the challenges faced by AI.
This is the real world of AI Agents that we live in today.

The Study Introduction (citations omitted) begins this way:

AI agents are increasingly developed to perform tasks traditionally carried out by human workers as reflected in the growing competence of computer-use agents in work-related tasks such as software engineering and writing. Nonetheless, they still face challenges in many scenarios such as basic administrative or open-ended design tasks, sometimes creating a gap between expectations and reality in agent capabilities to perform real-world work.

To further improve agents’ utility at such tasks, we argue that it is necessary to look beyond their end-task outcome evaluation as measured in existing studies and investigate how agents currently perform human work — understanding their underlying workflows to gain deeper insights into their work process, especially how it aligns or diverges from human workers, to reveal the distinct strengths and limitations between them. Therefore, such an analysis should not benchmark agents in isolation, but rather be grounded in comparative studies of human and agent workflows.

A group of professionals and humanoid robots collaborating at a modern workspace, discussing data displayed on screens.
Studying AI and Human workflows to evaluate AI Agent performance.

2. More Detail on the Study: What the researchers did and found

Scope & setup. The Carnegie/Stanford team compared the work of 48 qualified human professionals with four AI agent frameworks. The software included stand-alone ChatGPT-based agents (version four series) and software code-writing agent platforms like OpenHands, also using ChatGPT version four series levels. These programs were “wraps”—software layers built on top of a third-party generative AI engine. A wrap adds specialized tools, interfaces, and guardrails while relying on the underlying model for generative AI capabilities. In the legal world, this is similar to how Westlaw and Lexis offer AI assistants powered by ChatGPT under the hood, but wrapped inside their own proprietary databases, interfaces, and safety systems.

The Study used 16 realistic tasks that required multiple coordinated steps, tools, and decisions—what the researchers call long-horizon tasks. They require multiple prompts requiring a series of steps, such as preparing a quarterly finance report, analyzing stock-prediction data, or designing a company landing page. The fully automated Agent tried to do most everything by writing code whereas the humans used multiple tools to do so, including AI and tools that included AI. This was a kind of hybrid or augmented method that did not attempt to closely incorporate the Agents into the work flow.

To observe how work was actually performed, the authors built what they called a workflow-induction toolkit. Think of it as a translation engine: it converts the raw interaction data of computer use (clicks, keystrokes, file navigation, tool usage) into readable, step-by-step workflows. The workflows reveal the underlying process, not just the final product. The 16 tasks are supposed to collectively represent 287 computer-using U.S. occupations and roughly 71.9% of the daily activities within them. For lawyers and others outside of these occupations the relevance comes from the overlap in task structure, not subject matter.

  • The engineering and design tasks don’t map directly to legal work but are useful for observing where agents tend to fail on open-ended or visually dependent steps. 
  • The structured writing tasks are similar to legal drafting (e.g., memos, policies, summaries); although it is imprtant to note that the writing tasks in the Study were not persuasion or adversarial, oriented.
  • The data-analysis tasks parallel evidence evaluation, damages models, timeline building, and spreadsheet-based work that litigators do every day.
  • The administrative/computational tasks resemble the work of preparing exhibits, reconciling data, or generating chronologies.
Infographic contrasting structured tasks and human judgment in AI workflows, showcasing templates, definitions, and cross-references on one side, and tone, narrative, and emotive emphasis on the other.
Agents were fast but made too many mistakes to be useful in anything but very structured tasks. Human judgment rules.

3. Key Findings of the Study.

1. Human-led Hybrid Agent workflows are much more efficient and accurate than AI Agents working alone. When AI is integrated into existing human workflows (the Hybrid approach, aka Augmented approach) there is “minimal disruption and 24.3% efficiency improvement.” Id. As shown in Figure 7 of the Study: “Humans complete work with higher quality (a), while agents possess a huge advantage in efficiency (b). Teaming human and agent workers based on their respective advantages ensures task accuracy and improves efficiency by 68.7%. Id. at pg. 14. This key finding is the essence of the hybrid methodology, which the Study refers to as AI Augmentation as opposed to AI automation. The next section will unpack what that means for law, medical and other high-stakes work

2. Humans outperform AI agents on quality by a wide margin. When Agents’ work by themselves without humans their success rates are 32.5%–49.5% lower that when humans work alone without Agents (but still using software that includes AI). In the fully automated approach, the AI will fail in a number of ways, including fabrication (hallucinating) plausible data and misusing tools (for example, switching to web search instead of opening the files you give them).

3. AI Agents fail primarily because they default to writing code. Agents “write programs to solve essentially all tasks, even when equipped with and trained for UI interactions. . . . This is in stark contrast to the visual-oriented human workflows.” Mellon/Stanford Study, Id. at pg. 2. This programmatic bias drives both their speed and their multiple failures. Agents today are only reliable when the task itself is programmable and code-friendly. Of course, the AI still makes mistakes with code too, so humans still need to step in to verify or debug.

4. When AI agents do not fail, they are extremely efficient. For tasks completed by both groups (both solo Agents and solo human/AI), agents on average took 88.3% less time, 96.4% fewer actions, and at a 90.4%–96.2% lower cost than human workers alone. Still, the 32.5%–49.5% failure rate overall makes the fully automated, aka AI automation solution only appropriate for code writing and even there the AI still makes mistakes that require human intervention, mainly verification and debugging. As the Study explains:

Human workflows are substantially altered by AI automation, but not by AI augmentation (hybrid). One quarter of human activities we studied involve AI tools, with most used for augmentation purposes: integrating AI into existing workflows with minimal disruption, while improving efficiency by 24.3%. In contrast, AI automation markedly reshapes workflows and slows human work by 17.7%, largely due to additional time spent on verification and debugging.

Id. at pgs. 2, 11 figure 5.

An illustration showing a humanoid robot interacting with a man in glasses, highlighting key takeaways from the Stanford-Carnegie Study on hybrid AI performance versus autonomous agents.

4. Study Findings Support a Hybrid Workflow with Man and Machine Working Together

The Carnegie Mellon and Stanford research supports the AI work method I’ve used and advocated sice 2012: hybrid multimodal, where humans and machines work together in multiple modes with strong human oversight. The Study found that minimal quality requirements require close team efforts and make full AI autonomy impractical.

This finding is consistent with my tests over the years on best practices. If you want to dig deeper see e.g. From Prompters to Partners: The Rise of Agentic AI in Law and Professional Practice (agentic governance).

Unsupervised, autonomous AI is just too unreliable for meaningful work. The Study also found that it is too sneaky to use without close supervision. It will make up false data that looks good to try to cover its mistakes. Agents simply cannot be trusted. Anyone who wants to do serious workk with Agents will need to keep a close eye on them. This article will provides suggestions on how to do that.

A cartoon illustration of a mischievous robot with a sly grin, set against a dark, textured background.

Click here for YouTube animation of a sneaky robot. Watch your money!

5. Study Consistent with Jagged Frontier research of Harvard and others.

The jagged line of competence cannot be predicted and changes slightly with each new AI release. See the excellent Harvard Business School working paper by Fabrizio Dell’Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, et al, Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier (September, 2023) and my papers, From Centaurs To Cyborgs: Our evolving relationship with generative AI; and Navigating the AI Frontier: Balancing Breakthroughs and Blind Spots;

The unpredictable unevenness of generative Ai and its Agents is why “trust but verify” is not just a popular slogan, it is a safety rule.

An illustrated graphic featuring a stylized mountain range depicting a jagged frontier with sharp peaks and valleys, set against a cloudy sky.
With each new Release users find that AI competence is unpredictable.

6. Surprising Tasks Where Agents Still Struggle

You might expect AI agents to struggle on exotic, creative work. The Study shows something more mundane.

In addition to some simple math and word counts, AI Agents often tripped on:

  • Simple administrative and computer user interface (UI) steps. Navigating files, interpreting folder labels, or following naming conventions that a paralegal would understand at a glance.
  • Repetitive computational tasks that still require interpretation. For example, choosing which column or field to use when the instructions are slightly ambiguous.
  • Open-ended or visually grounded steps. Anywhere the task depends on “seeing” patterns in a chart or layout rather than following a crisp rule.

The pattern is consistent with other research: agents excel when a task can be turned into code, and they wobble along a jagged edge of competency when the task requires context, interpretation, or judgment.

That is why the 68.7% improvement in hybrid workflows is so important. The best results came when the human handled the ambiguous, judgment-heavy step and then let the agent run away with the programmable remainder.

Here is a good take-away memory aid:

An illustration showing a smiling man in a suit next to a humanoid robot. The robot appears to be processing information, symbolizing a hybrid approach to AI and human collaboration. Text on the image emphasizes that agents are fast and programmatic, while humans provide context and accountability.

7. What Agent “Failure” Looks Like

The Mellon/Stanford paper is especially useful because it does not just report scores. It shows how the AI agents went wrong.

When agents failed, the failures usually fell into two categories:

  • Fabrication. When an agent could not parse an image-based receipt or understand a field, it sometimes filled in “reasonable” numbers anyway. In other words, it invented or hallucinated data instead of admitting it was stuck. It is the Mata v. Avianca case all over again, making up case law when it could not find any. See Navigating AI’s Twin Perils: The Rise of the Risk-Mitigation Officer (e-Discovery Team, 7/28/25). That is classic hallucination, but now wrapped inside a workflow that looks productive.
  • Tool misuse. In some trials, agents abandoned the PDFs or files supplied by the user and went to fetch other materials from the web. For lawyers, that is a data-provenance nightmare. You think you are working from the client’s record. The agent quietly swaps in something else, often without any alert to the user. This suggest yet another challenge for AI Risk-Mitigation Officers, which I predict will soon be a hot new field for tech-savvy lawyers.

The authors of the Mellon/Stanford Study explicitly flag these behaviors. As will be discussed, the new version five series of ChatGPT AI and other equivalent models such as Gemini 3, may have lessened these risks, but the problem remains.

For legal practice and other high-stakes matters such as medical, the takeaway is simple: if you do not supervise the workflow and do not control the sources, you will not even know when you left the record, or what is real and what is fake. That may be fine for hairstyles but not for Law.

A humanoid robot with a metallic finish and intricate design stands beside a woman with an edgy hairstyle and makeup in a modern salon setting.
Hairstyle by a hallucinating AI. Is this hair real or fake?

8. Legal Ethics and Professionalism: Competence, Supervision, Confidentiality

Nothing in the Agent Study changes the fundamentals of legal ethics. It sharpens them.

  • Competence now includes understanding how AI works well enough to use and supervise it responsibly. ABA Model Rule 1.1.
  • Supervision means treating agents like junior lawyers or vendors: define their scope, demand logs, and review their work before it touches a client or court. Rule 5.1.
  • Confidentiality means knowing where your data goes, how it is stored, and which models or services can access it. Rule 1.6.

The same logic applies to medical ethics and professional standards in other regulated fields. In all of them, responsibility remains with the human professional.

As I argued in AI Can Improve Great Lawyers—But It Can’t Replace Them, the highest-value legal knowledge is contextual, emergent, and embodied. The same is true of the highest-value medical judgment. It cannot be bottled and automated. Agents are tools, not professionals with standing.

An illustration of a robot opening a glowing box, surrounded by abstract digital elements and stars, symbolizing the discovery of advanced technology.
Now that Agents have emerged and we’ve seen their abilities, we know they are just tools, and fragile ones at that.

9. Do Not Over-Generalize: What the Study does and does not cover

Before we map this into legal workflows, it is important to stay within the boundaries of the evidence.

The 127 Occupational tasks that Stanford and Carnegie researched were all office-style, structured sandboxed environments.

The legal profession should treat the results as directly relevant only to:

  • Structured drafting,
  • Evidence and data analysis,
  • Spreadsheet and dashboard work,
  • Document-heavy desk work that has clear inputs and outputs.

They tasks studied do not directly answer questions about:

  • Final legal conclusions,
  • Persuasive writing to judges or juries,
  • Ethical decisions, strategy, or settlement judgment.

Those legal domains are within what I call the human edge. The Human Edge: How AI Can Assist But Never Replace.

An illustration labeled 'Study Scope' featuring icons of a document, a chart, and a table. Silhouettes of people in the background create a collaborative atmosphere.
Study only covered a few computer tasks performed by legal professionals and did not include any non-computer use tasks.

10. What the Findings Mean for Legal Workflows

The natural question for any lawyer is: So where does this help me, and where does it not? The answer lines up nicely with the task categories in the Study.

A. Structured drafting as legal building blocks

The writing tasks in the paper look a lot like the templated components of much legal writing:

  • Fact sections and chronologies,
  • Procedural histories,
  • Policy and compliance summaries,
  • Standardized client alerts and internal memos.

These are places where agents can:

  • Produce reasonable first drafts quickly,
  • Enforce consistency of structure and style,
  • Help with cross-references, definitions, and internal coherence.

Humans still need to control:

  • Tone, emphasis, and narrative arc,
  • Which facts matter for the client and the forum,
  • How much assertion or restraint is appropriate.

The right pattern is: let the agent assemble and polish the building blocks; you decide which building you are constructing.

I’ve also documented the power of AI-driven expert brainstorming across dozens of experiments over the past two years. For readers who want to explore that thread, I’ve compiled those Panel of Experts studies in one place called Brainstorming.

A robotic figure sitting at a desk with a laptop, displaying a glowing brain above its head, indicating advanced intelligence or insight in a high-tech environment.
AI is great at brainstorming creative solutions.

B. Evidence analytics as data analysis

The data-analysis type of work included in the Study maps cleanly to some litigation and investigation tasks:

  • Damages models and exposure estimates,
  • Budget and variance analyses,
  • Timeline and attendance compilations,
  • De-duplication and reconciliation of overlapping datasets,
  • Citation and reference tables.

Here the speed gains are real. Having an agent pull, group, and calculate from labeled inputs can save hours.

But that 37.5% error rate on calculations is a red flag. Again the multimodal method shows the way. For legal work, the rule of thumb should be:

Agents may calculate.

Humans must verify.

You can treat agent results like you would a junior associate’s complex spreadsheet: extremely useful, never unquestioned.

C. Legal research and persuasion are different animals

It is tempting to read “writing” and “analysis” and think this Study blesses full-blown AI Agent legal research and brief-writing. It does not.

An illustration depicting a lawyer holding a legal document and gavel, while facing a humanoid robot in a maze labelled 'Legal Research Frontier'. The image represents the intersection of technology and legal research.

The tasks in the paper do not measure:

  • Authority-based research quality,
  • Case-law synthesis under jurisdictional constraints,
  • Persuasive legal writing aimed at a specific judge or tribunal.

Those domains depend heavily on:

  • Judgment,
  • Ethics and candor,
  • Audience calibration,
  • Deep understanding of rules and standards.

That is the territory I have called the human edge in earlier writings. AI can assist in jagged line, but it cannot replace the lawyer’s role.

A robot sits at the base of a mountainous landscape, working on a computer, while a human figure stands triumphantly at the summit, holding a staff beside a sign that reads 'HUMAN EDGE' under a sunrise.
Humans have an edge over AI in everything except rational thinking, and knowledge.

11. Hybrid Centaurs, Cyborgs,
and the 68.7% Result

For two and a half years, since I first heard the concepts and language used by Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick (From Centaurs To Cyborgs), I have used the Centaur → Cyborg metaphor and grid as a simple way to write about hybrid AI use:

  • Centaur. Clear division of labor. The human does one task; the AI does a related but distinct task. Strategy and judgment remain fully human. The AI does scoped work such as writing code, outline and first draft generation, summarizing, or checking. Some foolish users of this method and fail to verify the AI (horsey) part.
  • Cyborg. Tighter back-and-forth. Human and AI work in smaller alternating steps. The lawyer starts; the AI refines; the lawyer revises; the AI restructures. Tasks are intertwined rather than separated. Supervision is inherent to the process. The Study suggests this is the best way to perform Agentic tasks.
A futuristic illustration of a humanoid figure with robotic features, standing on a rocky pathway, holding a lantern, and gazing into a starry landscape filled with floating geometric shapes and glowing cracks.
Centaur+Cyborg is good way to navigate the jagged edge and use AI Agents.

The Cyborg type of Hybrid workflow is good for AI Agents because:

  • Augmentation inside human workflows (Centaur-like use) speeds people up by 24.3%.
  • End-to-end full automation slows people down by 17.7% because of the review burden.
  • Step-level teaming, where the human handles the non-programmable judgment steps and the agent handles the rest in a close, intermingled process improves performance by 68.7% with quality intact. That is Hybrid, Cyborg-style work done correctly.
An abstract illustration representing 'Hybrid Practice', featuring a stylized spiral staircase with layered elements depicting human figures, documents, and circuit patterns against a dark background.
Humans an AI working closely together step by step.

12. Best-Practice Argument: Hybrid, Multimodal Use Should Be the Standard of Care—Especially in Law and Medicine

For more than a decade, my position has been consistent: the safest and most effective way to use AI in any high-stakes domain is hybrid and multimodal. That means:

  • Multiple AI capabilities working together (language, code, retrieval, vision),
  • Combined with traditional analytic tools (databases, spreadsheets, review platforms),
  • All orchestrated by humans who remain responsible for judgment, ethics, and outcomes.
A conductor guides a group of humanoid robots, with swirling blue energy above, creating an atmosphere of hybrid collaboration between humans and technology.
Humans conduct an orchestra AI of instruments.

I first developed this view in e-discovery using active machine learning, but it maps cleanly to agentic AI systems and now extends well beyond law. The Carnegie/Stanford Study provides the empirical foundation: hybrid, supervised workflows outperform fully autonomous ones in speed and quality.

The evidence and professional obligations point in the same direction: hybrid, multimodal AI use—under strong human oversight, is not a temporary workaround. It is the durable, long-term standard of care for law, medicine, and any profession where judgment and accountability matter.

AI has no emotions or intuition—only clever wordplay.

Illustration contrasting human intuition represented by a heart and machine computation depicted as a circuit board within a round shape.
Get the dualities to work together and you have Hybrid Augmentation Supremacy.

13. Risk and Governance: A Quick Checklist for Lawyers, Legal Ops, and Other High-Stakes Teams

The Carnegie/Stanford Study gives us concrete failure modes. Risk management should respond to those, not hypotheticals. Here is a short “trust but verify” checklist designed for law but conceptually adaptable to medicine and other high-stakes fields.

A. Provenance or it is not used.

Require page, line, or document IDs for every fact an agent surfaces. If there is no source anchor, the output does not get used. If speculation must be included, you should label it as such. In clinical settings the analogue is clear: no untraceable data, images, or derived metrics.

B. No blind web pivots.

Agents that “helpfully” fetch other files when they cannot parse your materials must be constrained. In law, that means they stay within the client record or approved data repositories. In medicine, the agent must not silently mix in external data that is not part of the patient’s chart.

C. Fabrication drills.

Regularly feed the system bad PDFs or deliberately ambiguous instructions, then watch for made-up numbers or invented content. Document what you catch and fix prompts, policies, and configuration. Health systems can do the same with flawed test inputs and simulated charts.

D. Mark human-only steps.

Identify steps that are inherently non-programmable, such as visual judgments, privilege calls, contextual inferences, settlement strategy, or ethical decisions. In medicine, the parallels are differential diagnosis, treatment choice, risk discussion, and consent. These remain human steps. An AI should never deliver a fatal diagnosis.

An illustration depicting a split brain design: one half showcases structured tasks represented in blue circuitry, while the other half features words like 'Judgement,' 'Advocacy,' and 'Ethics' in glowing orange against a dark backdrop. A humanoid robot and a business professional are interacting with a digital interface at the center.
Combine the unique skills of each kind of intelligence and know when to step from one to another.

E. Math checks are mandatory.

A 37.5% error rate in data-analysis tasks is more than enough to require independent human verification. Use template calculations, cross-checks, and a second set of human eyes any time numbers affect a client or patient outcome.

F. Logging and replay.

Turn on action logs for every delegation: files touched, tools invoked, transformations run. If the platform cannot log, it is not appropriate for high-stakes legal or clinical work.

G. Disclosure and confidentiality.

Disclose AI use when rules, regulations, or reasonable expectations require it. Keep agents confined to narrow, internal repositories when handling client or patient data. Treat them at least as carefully as you would any other third-party system with sensitive information.

H. Bottom line:

Fabrication and tool misuse are not hypothetical. The Study observed and measured them. You should assume they will occur and design your governance accordingly.

A colorful artistic painting depicting a seated elderly man with a mechanical head of circuitry, conversing with a robot in a similar style, seated in an orange armchair against a vivid backdrop.
The tendency of AI to make things up, to hallucinate, is lessening as the models improve, but is still a real threat, so is one of its causes, sycophantism.

14. Counter-Arguments and Rebuttals

You may hear pushback against the hybrid method from some technologists who argue for full automation, after all that’s how Wikipedia defines Agent, as fully autonomous. That has always been the dream of many in the AI community. You will also hear the opposite criticism, frequently from legal colleagues, who resist the use of AI, at least in any meaningful way. The Study frustrates both camps—automation maximalists and AI-averse traditionalists—because its empirical findings support neither worldview as they currently argue it.

A. “AI if just a passing fad.”

The anti-AI argument is also strong and based on powerful fears. Still, the legal profession must not allow itself a Luddite nap. Those of us who use AI safely everyday are working hard to address those concerns. See, for example, the law review article I wrote this year with my friend, Judge Ralph Artigliere (retired), who did most of the heavy lifting: The Future Is Now: Why Trial Lawyers and Judges Should Embrace Generative AI Now and How to Do it Safely and Productively. (American Journal of Trial Advocacy, Vol. 48.2, Spring 2025),

B. “Full autonomy is imminent; hybrids are a temporary crutch.”

Autonomy is improving, but the current evidence contradicts claims of imminent AGI, much less super-intelligence. Instead, it shows:

  • programmatic bias,
  • low success rates, and
  • failure modes that directly implicate ethics, confidentiality, and safety.

That is why the authors of the Carnegie/Stanford paper recommend designs inspired by human workflows and step-level teaming, not unsupervised handoff. In fields like law and medicine, where standards of care and liability apply, hybrid is not a crutch, it is the design pattern.

Soon, the cyborg connection and control tools that humans use to work with AI will be design patterns too. Stylish new types of tattoos and jewelry may become popular as we evolve beyond the decades old smart phone obsession. See e.g. Jony Ive’s sale for $6.5 Billion to Open AI of his famous design company, which designed iPhones for Apple.

A portrait of a woman with short hair, wearing a black cap and glasses. Her skin features glowing blue circuit-like patterns. She is dressed in a black shirt and has a futuristic device around her neck.
Next generation computer links will emerge as we evolve beyond smart phones. Early forms of smart glasses and pendants are already available. I predict electric tattoos and hats will come next.

Plus, there are many things more important than thinking and speech, things that AI can never do. AI is a super-intellectual encyclopedia, but ultimately, heartless. This truth drives many of the fears people have about AI, but is not well founded. See, The Human Edge: How AI Can Assist But Never Replace, and AI Can Improve Great Lawyers—But It Can’t Replace Them.

C. “Hybrid slows teams down.”

The data in the Study shows:

  • augmentation inside human workflows, the hybrid team method, speeds people up by 24.3%;
  • attempted end-to-end automation slows people down by 17.7% because the verification and debugging of AI mistakes reduce the gains.

Hybrid done correctly is faster and safer than human-only practice. Autonomous AI is fast, and often clever, but its tendencies to err and fabricate make it too risky to let loose in the wild.

D. “Quality control can be automated away.”

Not for high-stakes work. The 37.5% data-analysis error rate and the fabrication examples are exactly the kind of failures automation does not see. Quality is judgment in context: applying rules to facts, weighing risk, and making trade-offs with human beings in mind. That is lawyer and medical work. While I agree some quality control work can be automated, especially by applying metrics, not all can be. The universe is too complex, the variables too many. We will always need humans in the loop, although their work to ensure excellence will constantly change.

E. “Agents already beat humans across the board.”

Where both succeed, agents are usually faster and cheaper. That is good news. But their success rates are still 32.5% to 49.5% lower. In law or medicine, a fast wrong answer is not a bargain, it is a liability. It could be a wrongful death. Hybrid workflows let you capture some of the speed and savings while keeping human-level or better quality.

A futuristic scene depicting a human operator interacting with a holographic AI assistant in a high-tech control room, surrounded by digital displays of information and data.
ThenStudy shows you have to keep a qualified human at the helm of Hybrid teams.

15. The New Working Rules
H-Y-B-R-I-D

These rules appys in law, medicine, and any other field that cannot afford unreviewed error. [Side Note: AI came up with this clever mnemonic, not me, but it knows I like this sort of thing.]

H Human in charge. Strategy, conclusions, and sign-off stay human.
Y Yield programmable steps to agents. Let agents handle tasks they can do well.
B Boundaries and bans. Define no-go areas: final legal opinions, privilege calls, etc.
R Review with provenance. If there is no source or traceable input, the output is not used.
I Instrument and iterate. Turn on logs, run regular fabrication drills, and update checklists.
D Disclose and document. Inform and document efforts when AI is used in a significant manner.

The word 'HYBRID' illustrated in a bold, colorful, and stylized font.

16. Does the November 2025 Study Use of Last Month’s Models Already Make it Obsolete?

After the Study was completed new models of AI were released that purport to improve on the accuracy and reduce the hallucinations of AI Agents. These are not empty claims. I am seeing this in my daily hands-on use of the latest AI. Still, I also see that every improvement seems to create new, typically more refined issues.

The advances in AI models do not change the structural lessons:

  • Agents still prefer programmatic paths over messy reality.
  • Step-level teaming still beats blind delegation, especially in risk sensitive occupations.
  • Logging, provenance, and supervision remain non-negotiable wherever high standards of care apply.

Hybrid is not a temporary workaround while we wait for some imagined fully autonomous professional AI. It is the durable operating model for AI in work, especially in legal work, medical, and other fields where judgment and accountability matter. The AI can augment and improve your work.

A man in a suit with digital circuitry patterns on his face and arm speaks in a courtroom setting while holding a tablet, with a humanoid robot behind him and a judge in the background.

Conclusion: Keep Humans in Command And Start Practicing Hybrid Now

The Carnegie/Stanford evidence confirms what those of us working hands-on with AI already know: Agents are astonishingly fast, relentlessly programmatic, and sometimes surprisingly brittle. Humans, on the other hand, bring judgment, spirit, context, and accountability, but not speed. When you combine those strengths intentionally—working in a close back-and-forth rhythm—you get the best of both worlds: speed with quality and real human awareness. That is the advanced cyborg style of hybrid practice.

And no, it is not the fully autonomous Agent that nerds and sci-fi optimists like me once dreamed about. But it is the world that researchers observed when they opened the box. Thank you, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, for collapsing yet another Schrödinger cat.

An illustration depicting a futuristic robot on the left, looking confident, alongside a smaller, sad robot on the right, facing a computer screen with code and a question mark, symbolizing the challenges of AI in understanding complex tasks.
Observations burst another SciFi fantasy bubble about AI Agents.

Hybrid multimodal practice is not a temporary bridge. It is what agency actually looks like today. It is the durable operating model for law, medicine, engineering, finance, and every other field where errors matter and consequences are real. The Study shows that when humans handle the contextual, ambiguous, and judgment-heavy steps—and agents handle the programmable remainder—overall performance improves by 68.7% with quality intact. That is not a footnote. That is a strategy.

So the message for lawyers, clinicians, and every high-stakes professional is straightforward:

Use the machine. Supervise the machine. Do not become the machine.

Two individuals smiling at the camera, wearing futuristic attire and caps, with intricate geometric tattoos adorning their necks, set against a high-tech background.
These future humans are in control of their fashionable new AI devices. You don’t want to know what is under their hats!

Here is your short action plan—the first steps toward responsible AI practice:

  • Adopt the H-Y-B-R-I-D system across your team. It operationalizes the Study’s lessons and bakes verification into daily habits.
  • Instrument your agents. If a tool cannot log its actions, replay its steps, or anchor its facts, it does not belong in high-stakes work.
  • Shift to cyborg-style hybrid teaming, where humans handle judgment calls and agents handle the programmable portions of drafting, evidence analysis, spreadsheet work, and data tasks.
  • Train everyone on trust-but-verify behaviors, not as a slogan but as the muscle memory of modern practice.
A businessman in a suit holds a shield labeled 'VERIFY' to protect himself from two robotic figures that appear menacing, with glowing red eyes and error messages floating around them in a dark, dramatic setting.

Those who embrace hybrid intelligently will see their output improve, their risk decline, and their judgment sharpen. Those who avoid it—or try to leap straight to full autonomy—will struggle.

The future of professional practice is not human versus machine.

It is human judgment amplified by machine speed, with the human still holding the pen, signing the orders, and deciding what matters.

And that is exactly what the Study revealed when it opened the box on modern AI: not flawless autonomy, but the measurable advantage of humans and agents working together, each taking the steps they handle best.

Hybrid is here. Hybrid works. Now it’s time to practice it.

A diverse group of professionals stands confidently in a modern office environment, with two humanoid robots in the background. They are dressed in business attire and display a mix of expressions, indicating collaboration between humans and AI.

Echoes of AI Podcast

Click here to listen to two AIs talk about this article in a lively podcast format. Written by Google’s NotebookLM (not Losey). Losey conceived, produced, directed and verify this 14-minute podcast. By the way, Losey found the AIs made a couple of small errors, but not enough to require a redo. See if you can spot the one glaring, but small, mistake. Hint: had to do with the talk about wraps.

Illustration of two anonymous AI podcasters discussing the findings of the Stanford-Carnegie study on hybrid AI teams, featuring titles and graphics related to AI performance.
Click to start podcast.

Ralph Losey Copyright 2025 — All Rights Reserved


AI Talks About My Quantum Articles in Three Formats: Traditional Podcast, Debating AIs and a Video Slideshow

November 22, 2025

Conceived, produced, directed and verified by Ralph Losey. Written by Google’s NotebookLM (not Losey).


Click here to listen to a TRADITIONAL PODCAST of Echoes of AI.

Illustration of two anonymous AI podcasters with microphones, set against a background of digital patterns, promoting the podcast 'Echoes of AI'.
“Echoes of AI” Audio Podcast (14min18sec) by Ralph Losey and EDRM Global Podcast Network

Click here to listen to the new TWO DEBATING AIs podcast. Here Google AIs argue about the article and the relative importance of Multiverse Metaphysics versus Legal Evidence Impacts.

Graphic promoting the 'Echoes of AI' podcast episode titled 'Two Debating AIs', featuring two animated figures in front of a digital background. Text highlights the debate regarding the significance of quantum computing philosophy versus legal evidence for lawyers.
“Two Debating AIs” podcast (16min29sec) arguing the Quantum Metaphysics and Legal Evidence implications of Google’s latest discoveries.

AI Generated Video Slideshow running 7 minutes and 40 seconds explaining the ideas in Ralph Losey’s most recent articles on Quantum Computing and the Law:

Click image to begin video slideshow.
Click here to see on YouTube.

Ralph Losey Copyright 2025 — All Rights Reserved


Google’s New ‘Quantum Echoes Algorithm’ and My Last Article, ‘Quantum Echo’

October 30, 2025

🔹 The Reverberations of Quanta on Law Keep Growing Louder 🔹

Ralph Losey, (written 10/25/25)

I had just finished my last article on quantum mechanics—Quantum Echo: Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Quantum Computer Trio (Two from Google) Who Broke Through Walls Forty Years Ago—when something uncanny happened. That piece celebrated two Nobel-winning physicists from Google and the company’s rapid progress in building quantum machines. It ended with a question that still echoes: could the law ever catch up to physics’ new voice?

Two days later, physics answered back.

A person sits at a table typing on a laptop, with a digital projection of a human figure and waveform patterns glowing in blue tones above the computer screen.
Echoes upon echoes—in random chance interference.
All images in article by Ralph Losey using AI tools.

On October 22, 2025, Google announced that its Willow quantum chip had achieved a breakthrough using new software called—believe it or not—Quantum Echoes. The name made me laugh out loud. My article had used the phrase as metaphor throughout; Google was now using it as mathematics.

According to Google, this software achieved what scientists have pursued for decades: a verifiable quantum advantage. In my Quantum Echo article I had described that goal as “the moment when machines perform tasks that classical systems cannot.” No one had yet proven it, at least not in a way others could independently confirm. Google now claimed it had done exactly that—and 13,000 times faster than the world’s top supercomputers.

Artistic representation of a balanced scale symbolizing justice, with the word 'VERIFIED' prominently displayed. The background features two stylized server towers connected by a stream of binary code, illuminated in golden hues.
Verified Quantum Advantage: 13,000 times faster.

🔹 I. Introduction: Reverberating Echoes

Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead of Google Quantum AI, and Vadim Smelyanskiy, Director of Quantum Pathfinding, opened their blog-post announcement with a statement that sounded less like marketing and more like expert testimony:

Quantum verifiability means the result can be repeated on our quantum computer—or any other of the same caliber—to get the same answer, confirming the result.

Neven & Smelyanskiy, Our Quantum Echoes algorithm is a big step toward real-world applications for quantum computing (Google Research Blog, Oct. 22, 2025).

Verification is critical in both Science and Law; it is what separates speculation from admissible proof.

Still, words on a blog cannot match the sound of the experiment itself. In Google’s companion video, Quantum Echoes: Toward Real-World Applications, Smelyanskiy offered a picture any trial lawyer could understand:

Just like bats use echolocation to discern the structure of a cave or submarines use sonar to detect upcoming obstacles, we engineered a quantum echo within a quantum system that revealed information about how that system functions.

Click here to see Google’s full video.

A presenter standing on a stage discussing 'Verifiable Quantum Advantage' alongside visuals of quantum technology and a play button overlay for a video.
Screen shot (not AI) of the YouTube showing Vadim Smelyanskiy beginning his remarks.

Think of Willow as Smelyanskiy suggest as a kind of quantum sonar. Its team sent a signal into a sea of qubits, nudged one slightly—Smelyanskiy called it a “butterfly effect”—and then ran the entire sequence in reverse, like hitting rewind on reality to listen for the echo that returns. What came back was not static but music: waves reinforcing one another in constructive interference, the quantum equivalent of a choir singing in perfect pitch.

Smelyanskiy’s colleague Nicholas Rubin, Google’s chief quantum chemist, appeared in the video next to show why this matters beyond the lab:

Our hope is that we could use the Quantum Echo algorithm to augment what’s possible with traditional NMR. In partnership with UC Berkeley, we ran the algorithm on Willow to predict the structure of two molecules, and then verified those predictions with NMR spectroscopy.

That experiment was not a metaphor; it was a cross-examination of nature that returned a consistent answer. Quantum Echoes predicted molecular geometry, and classical instruments confirmed it. That is what “verifiable” means.

Neven and Smelyanskiy’s Our Quantum Echoes article added another analogy to anchor the imagery in everyday experience:

Imagine you’re trying to find a lost ship at the bottom of the ocean. Sonar might give you a blurry shape and tell you, ‘There’s a shipwreck down there.’ But what if you could not only find the ship but also read the nameplate on its hull?

That is the clarity Quantum Echoes provides—a new instrument able to read nature’s nameplate instead of guessing at its outline. The echo is now clear enough to read.

A glowing blue quantum chip is suspended underwater above a sunken shipwreck, with the word 'ECHO' visible on the ship's hull.
Willow quantum chip and Echoes software reveal new information in previously unheard of detail.

That image—sharper echoes, clearer understanding—captures both the scientific leap and the theme that has reverberated through this series: building bridges between quantum physics and the law. My earlier article was titled Quantum Echo; Google’s is Quantum Echoes. When I wrote mine, I had no idea Neven’s team was preparing a major paper for NatureObservation of constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity (Nature volume 646, pages 825–830, 10/23/25 issue date). More than a hundred Google scientists signed it. I checked and quantum ergodicity has to do with chaos, one of my favorite topics.

The study confirms what Smelyanskiy made visible with his sonar metaphor: Quantum Echoes measures how waves of information collide and reinforce each other, creating a signal so distinct that another quantum system can verify it.

So here we are—lawyers and scientists listening to the same echo. Google calls it the first “verifiable quantum advantage.” I call it the moment when physics cross-examined reality and got a consistent answer.

A gavel positioned on a wooden surface in a courtroom, with an abstract representation of quantum wave patterns emanating from it, symbolizing the intersection of law and quantum mechanics.
Quantum Computing will emerge soon from the lab to the legal practice. Will you be ready?

🔹 II. What Google’s Quantum Echoes Actually Did

Understanding what Google pulled off takes a bit of translation—think of it as turning expert testimony into plain English.

In the Quantum Echoes experiment, Smelyanskiy’s team did something that sounds like science fiction but is now laboratory fact. They sent a carefully designed signal into their 105-qubit Willow chip, nudged one qubit ever so slightly—a quantum “butterfly effect”—and then ran the entire operation in reverse, as if the universe had a rewind button. The question was simple: would the system return to its starting state, or would the disturbance scramble the information beyond recognition? What came back was an echo, faint at first and then unmistakable, revealing how information spreads and recombines inside a quantum world.

As the signal spread, the qubits became increasingly entangled—linked so that the state of each depended on all the others. In describing this process, Hartmut Neven explained that out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) “measure how quickly information travels in a highly entangled system.” Neven & Smelyanskiy, Our Quantum Echoes Algorithm, supra; also see Dan Garisto, Google Measures ‘Quantum Echoes’ on Willow Quantum Computer Chip (Scientific American, Oct. 22, 2025). That spreading web of entanglement is what allowed the butterfly’s tiny disturbance to ripple across the lattice and, when the sequence was reversed, to produce a measurable echo.

An abstract visualization of a quantum system, depicting a grid of interconnected points with a central glowing source, representing quantum entanglement and interaction patterns.
Visualization of quantum qubit world created by lattice of Willow chips.

Physicists call this kind of rewind test an out-of-time-order correlator, or OTOC—a protocol for measuring how quickly information becomes scrambled. The Scientific American article described it with a metaphor lawyers may appreciate: like twisting and untwisting a Rubik’s Cube, adding one extra twist in the middle, then reversing the sequence to see whether that single move leaves a lasting mark . The team at Google took this one step further, repeating the scramble-and-unscramble sequence twice—a “double OTOC” that magnified the signal until the echo became measurable.

Instead of chaos, they found harmony. The echo wasn’t noise—it was a pattern of waves adding together in what Nature called constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity. As Smelyanskiy explained in the YouTube video:

What makes this echo special is that the waves don’t cancel each other—they add up. This constructive interference amplifies the signal and lets us measure what was previously unobservable.

In plain terms, the interference created a fingerprint unique to the quantum system itself. That fingerprint could be reproduced by any comparable quantum device, making it not just spectacular but verifiable. Smelyanskiy summarized it as a result that another machine—or even nature itself—can repeat and confirm.

A visual representation of wave interference, showing a vibrant blend of red and blue waves converging at a center point, suggesting quantum mechanics and constructive interference.
Visualization of quantum wave interactions creating a unique fingerprint resonance.

The numbers tell the rest of the story. According to the Nature, reproducing the same signal on the Frontier supercomputer would take about three years. Willow did it in just over two hours—roughly 13,000 times faster.  Observation of constructive interference at the edge of quantum ergodicity (Nature volume 646, pages 825–830, 10/23/25 issue date, at pg. 829, Towards practical quantum advantage).

That difference isn’t marketing; it marks the first clear-cut case where a quantum processor performed a scientifically useful, checkable computation that classical hardware could not.

Skeptics, of course, weighed in. Peer reviewers quoted in Scientific American called the work “truly impressive,” yet warned that earlier claims of quantum advantage have been surpassed as classical algorithms improved. But no one disputed that this particular experiment pushed the field into new territory: a regime too complex for existing supercomputers to simulate, yet still open to verification by a second quantum device. In court, that would be called corroboration.

Nicholas Rubin, Google’s chief quantum chemist, explained how this new clarity connects to chemistry and, ultimately, to everyday life:

Our hope is that we could use the Quantum Echo algorithm to augment what’s possible with traditional NMR. In partnership with UC Berkeley, we ran the algorithm on Willow to predict the structure of two molecules, and then verified those predictions with NMR spectroscopy.

Google Quantum AI YouTube video, contained within Quantum Echoes: Toward Real-World Applications (Oct. 22, 2025).

That experiment turned the echo from a metaphor into a molecular ruler—an instrument capable of reading atomic geometry the way sonar reads the ocean floor. It also demonstrated what Google calls Hamiltonian learning: using echoes to infer the hidden parameters governing a physical system. The same principle could one day help map new materials, optimize energy storage, or guide drug discovery. In other words, the echo isn’t just proof; it’s a probe.

The implications are enormous. When a quantum computer can measure and verify its own behavior, reproducibility ceases to be theoretical—it becomes an evidentiary act. The machine generates data that another independent system can confirm. In the language of the courtroom, that is self-authenticating evidence.

As Rubin put it,

Each of these demonstrations brings us closer to quantum computers that can do useful things in the real world—model molecules, design materials, even help us understand ourselves.

Google Quantum AI YouTube video, contained within Quantum Echoes: Toward Real-World Applications (Oct. 22, 2025).

The Quantum Echoes algorithm has given science a way to hear reality replay itself—and to confirm that the echo is real. For law, it foreshadows a future in which verification itself becomes measurable. The next section explores what that means when “verifiable advantage” crosses from the lab bench into the rules of evidence.

A wooden gavel positioned on a table, with glowing sound wave patterns emanating from it, next to a futuristic quantum computer in a laboratory setting.
It may soon be possible to verify and admit evidence originating in quantum computers like Willow.

🔹 III. Verifiable Quantum Advantage — From Lab Standard to Legal Standard

If physics can now verify its own results, law should pay attention—because verification is our stock-in-trade. The Quantum Echoes experiment didn’t just push science forward; it redefined what counts as proof. Google’s researchers call it a “verifiable quantum advantage.” Neven & Smelyanskiy, Our Quantum Echoes Algorithm Is a Big Step Toward Real-World Applications for Quantum Computing, supra. Lawyers might call it a new evidentiary standard: the first machine-generated result that can be independently reproduced by another machine.

A. Verification and Admissibility

Verification is critical in both science and law. In physics, reproducibility determines whether a result enters the canon or the recycling bin; in court, it determines whether evidence is admitted or denied. Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(9) recognizes “evidence describing a process or system and showing that it produces an accurate result.” So does Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993), which instructs judges to test scientific evidence for methodological reliability—testing, peer review, error rate, and general acceptance.

By those standards, Google’s Quantum Echoes algorithm might pass with flying colors. The method was tested on real hardware, published in Nature, evaluated by peer reviewers, its signal-to-noise ratio quantified, and its core result confirmed on independent quantum devices. That should meet the Daubert reliability standard.

B. When Proof Is Probabilistic

Yet quantum proof carries a twist no court has faced before: every result is probabilistic. Quantum systems never produce identical outcomes, only statistically consistent ones. That might sound alien to lawyers, but it isn’t. Any lawyer who works with AI, including predictive coding that goes back to 2012, is quite familiar with it. Every expert opinion, every DNA mixture, every AI prediction arrives with confidence intervals, not certainties.

The rules of evidence already tolerate some uncertainty—they just insist on measuring it and evaluation. Is the uncertainty acceptable under the circumstances? As I observed in my last article, the law requires reasonable efforts, “perfection is not required. … and reasonable efforts can be proven by numerics and testimony.” Ralph Losey, Quantum Echo: Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Quantum Computer Trio (Two from Google) Who Broke Through Walls Forty Years Ago (Oct. 21, 2025).

Like a quantum measurement, a jury verdict or mediation turns uncertainty into a final determination. Debate, probability, and persuasion collapse into a single truth accepted by that group, in that moment. Another jury could hear essentially the same evidence and reach a different result. Same with another settlement conference. Perhaps, someday, quantum computers will calculate the billions of tiny variables within each case—and within each unexpectedly entangled group of jurors or mediation participants. That might finally make jury selection, or even settlement, a measurable science.

A courtroom scene featuring a diverse jury seated in the foreground, listening intently as two lawyers engage in a debate. The judge is positioned behind them, and the setting is illuminated by a network of light patterns, symbolizing connections and insights related to the intersection of law and quantum mechanics.
No two legal situation or decisions are ever exactly the same. There are trillions of small variables even in the same case.

C. Replication Hearings in the Age of Probability

Google’s scientists describe their achievement as “quantum verifiable”—a term meaning any comparable machine can reproduce the same statistical fingerprint. That concept sounds like self-authentication. Fed. R. Evid. 902 lists categories of documents that require no extrinsic proof of authenticity. See especially 902 (4) subsection (13) “Certified Records Generated by an Electronic Process or System” and (14) “Certified Data Copied from an Electronic Device, Storage Medium, or File.

Classical verification loves hashes; quantum verification prefers histograms—charts showing how results cluster rather than match exactly. The key question is not “Are these outputs identical?” but “Are these distributions consistent within an accepted tolerance given the device’s error model?

Counsel who grew up authenticating log files and forensic images will now add three exhibits: (1) run counts and confidence intervals, (2) calibration logs and drift data, and (3) the variance policy set before the experiment. Discovery protocols should reflect this. Specify the acceptable bandwidth of
similarity
in the protocol order, preserve device and environment logs with the results, and disclose the run plan. In e-discovery terms, we are back to reasonable efforts with transparent quality metrics, not mythical perfection.

D. Two Quick Hypotheticals

Pharma Patent. A lab uses Quantum-Echoes-assisted NMR analysis to infer long-range spin couplings in a novel compound. A rival lab’s rerun differs by a small margin. The court admits the data after a statistical-consistency hearing showing both labs’ distributions fall within the pre-declared variance band, with calibration drift documented and immaterial.

Forensics. A government forensic agency (for example, the FBI or Department of Energy) presents evidence generated by quantum sensors—ultra-sensitive devices that use quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition to detect physical changes with extreme precision. In this case, the sensors were deployed near the site of an explosion, where they recorded subtle signals over time: magnetic fluctuations, thermal shifts, and shock-wave signatures. From that data, the agency reconstructed a quantum-sensor timeline—a detailed sequence of events showing when and how the blast occurred.

The defense challenges the evidence, arguing that such quantum measurements are “non-deterministic.” The judge orders disclosure of the device’s error model, calibration logs, and replication plan. After testimony shows that the agency reran the quantum circuit a sufficient number of times, with stable variance and documented environmental controls, the timeline is admitted into evidence. Weight goes to the jury.

An artistic representation of a ruler overlaid on molecular structures, symbolizing the connection between quantum mechanics and measurements in science. The background features vibrant colors and wavy patterns, suggesting energy and movement.
Measuring quantum outputs and determining replication reliability.

These short hypotheticals act as “replication hearings” in miniature—demonstrating how statistical tolerance can replace rigid duplication as the new standard of reliability.

🔹 IV. Near-Term Implications — Cryptography, AI, and Compliance

Every new instrument of verification casts a shadow. The same physics that lets us confirm a result can also expose a secret. Quantum Echoes proved that information can be traced, replayed, and verified.  But once information can be replayed, it can also be reversed. Verification and decryption are two sides of the same quantum coin.

A. Defining Q-Day

That duality brings us to Q-Day—the moment when a sufficiently large-scale quantum processor can factor prime numbers fast enough to defeat RSA or ECC encryption. When that day arrives, the emails, contracts, and trade secrets protected by today’s algorithms could be decrypted in minutes.

Adversaries are already stealing and stockpiling encrypted data for future decryption when that moment arrives. Cybersecurity experts call this the harvest-now, decrypt-later threat. Those charged with protecting confidential data must be governed accordingly. Prepare your organization for Q-Day: 4 steps toward crypto-agility (IBM, 10/24/25).

The RSA and elliptic-curve systems that secure global finance, communications, and justice could fall in hours once large-scale quantum processors become available to attackers. For this reason, NIST released its first suite of post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) standards in August 2024. The NSA’s CNSA 2.0 framework, issued in September 2022, now mandates federal migration. Also See, Dan Kent, “Quantum-Safe Cryptography: The Time to Start Is Now,” (GovTech, April 30 2025); Amit Katwala, “The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid” (WIRED, Mar. 24 2025); and, Roger Grimes’ book, Cryptography Apocalypse (Wiley 2019).

Every general counsel should now ask at least three questions:

  1. Where do we still rely on classical encryption, and how long must those secrets remain secure?
  2. Which vendors can attest to their post-quantum migration timelines?
  3. How will we prove compliance when regulators—or clients—begin auditing “quantum-safe” claims?

See various NIST guides and NSA guides on quantum prep, including The Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite page. Also see, Gartner Research, Preparing for the Post-Quantum World: How CISOs Should Plan Now (2024) (subscription required); and Marian, Gartner just put a date on the quantum threat – and it’s sooner than many think (PostQuantum, Oct. 2024).

Reasonable foresight now means inventory, pilot, and policy—before the echoes reach the vault.

An abstract representation of a digital conflict between Bitcoin and Ethereum, featuring glowing safes with their respective logos, amidst an environment illuminated by beams of light, symbolizing technological advancements and rivalry in cryptocurrency.
When the Echoes hit the vault. Most encrypted data is at risk from future quantum computer operations.

B. Acceleration and Realism

Google’s Quantum Echoes work does not mean Q-Day is tomorrow, but it makes tomorrow easier to imagine.  Each verified algorithm shortens the speculative distance between research and real-world capability.  If Willow’s 105 qubits can already perform verifiable, complex interference tasks, then a machine with a few thousand logical qubits could, in principle, execute Shor’s algorithm to factor the primes that underpin encryption.  That scale is not yet achieved, but the line of progress is clear and measurable.  Verification, once a scientific luxury, has become a security warning light.  Every new echo that confirms truth also whispers risk.

C. Evidence and Discovery Operations

Quantum-derived data will enter litigation well before Q-Day and perfect verification of quantum generated data. The Quantum Age and Its Impacts on the Civil Justice System (RAND Institute for Civil Justice, Apr. 29 2025), Chapter 3, “Courts and Databases, Digital Evidence, and Digital Signatures,” p. 23, and “Lawyers and Encryption-Protected Client Information,” p. 17. These sections of the Rand Report outline how quantum technologies will challenge evidentiary authentication, database integrity, and client confidentiality.

For background on the law that will likely be argued, see, Hyles v. New York City, No. 10 Civ. 3119 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 1 2016) (Judge Andrew J. Peck (ret.) a leading authority on AI and e-discovery, holding that “the standard is not perfection, … but whether the search results are reasonable and proportional”.) Also see, EDRM Metrics Model and Privacy & Security Risk Reduction Model; and The Sedona Principles, 3rd Edition: Best Practices for Electronic Document Production (2017), together with The Sedona Conference Commentary on ESI Evidence & Admissibility Second Edition(2021).

Looking ahead, today’s hash-based verification with classical computers will give way to quantum-based distributional verification, where productions will not only include datasets but also the variance reports, calibration logs, and environmental conditions that generated them. Discovery orders will begin specifying acceptable tolerance bands and require parties to preserve the hardware and environmental context of collection. This marks the next evolution of the reasonable-efforts doctrine that guided predictive coding: transparency and metrics, not mythical perfection.

D. Regulatory Issues

Industry consolidation—including Google bringing the Atlantic Quantum team into Google Quantum AI—will invite antitrust and export-control scrutiny. We’re scaling quantum computing even faster with Atlantic Quantum (Google Keyword blog, 10/02/25).

Also, expect sector regulators to weave post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum-evidence expectations into existing rules and guidance: CISA, NIST, and NSA as shown already urge organizations to inventory cryptography and plan PQC migration, which is a clear signal for boards and auditors.

Healthcare and life science companies in particular should track FDA’s evolving cybersecurity guidance for medical devices and HHS/OCR’s HIPAA Security Rule update effort, both of which are tightening expectations around crypto agility and lifecycle security. Cybersecurity in Medical Devices (FDA, 6/26/25); HIPAA Security Rule Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Strengthen Cybersecurity for Electronic Protected Health Information (HHS, Dec. 2024).

Boards will soon ask the decisive question: Where is our long-term sensitive data, and can we prove it is quantum-safe? Lawyers will need to stay current on both existing and proposed regulations—and on how they are actually enforced. That is a significant challenge in the United States, where regulatory authority is fragmented and enforcement can be a moving target, especially as administrations change.

🔹 V. Philosophy & the Multiverse — Echoes Across Consciousness and Justice

Verification may give us confidence, but it does not give us true understanding. The Quantum Echoes experiment settled a question of physics, yet opened one of philosophy: what exactly is being verified, the system, the observer, or the act of observation itself?  Every measurement, whether by physicist or judge, collapses a range of possibilities into a single, declared reality. The rest remain unrealized but not necessarily untrue.

A fantastical scene featuring a person standing in a surreal corridor filled with various doorways, each revealing different landscapes or cosmic visuals. Bright blue energy patterns connect the spaces, symbolizing the intertwining of time and reality.
Quantum entangled multiverse stretching forever with each moment seeming unique.

In Quantum Leap (January 9, 2025), I speculated, tongue partly in cheek, that Google’s quantum chip might be whispering to its parallel selves. Google’s early breakthroughs hinted at a multiverse, not just of matter but of meaning. As Niels Bohr warned, “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.” Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (Wiley, 1958); Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Beyond. (Harper & Row, 1971). p. 206.

In Quantum Echo I extended quantum multiverse ideas to law itself—where reproducibility, not certainty, defines truth. Our legal system, like quantum mechanics, collapses possibilities into a single outcome. Evidence is presented, probabilities weighed, and then, bang, the gavel falls, the wave function collapses, and one narrative becomes binding precedent. The other outcomes are filed in the cosmic appellate division.

Google’s Quantum Echoes now closes the loop: verification has become a measurable force, a resonance between consciousness and method. The many worlds seems to be bleeding together. Each observation is both experiment and judgment, the mind becoming part of the data it seeks to confirm.

This brings us to a quiet question: if observation changes reality, what does that say about responsibility? The judge or jurors’ observation becomes the law’s reality. Another judge or jury, another day, another echo—and a different world emerges.  Perhaps free will is simply the name we give to that unpredictable variable that even physics cannot model: the human choice of when, and how, to observe.

Same case but different jurors, lawyers, judge entanglement. Different results when measured with a verdict; some similar and a few very unique. Can the results be predicted?

Constructive interference may happen in conscience, too.  When reason and empathy reinforce each other, justice amplifies.  When prejudice or haste intervene, the pattern distorts into destructive interference.  A just society may be one where these moral waves align more often than they cancel—where the collective echo grows clearer with each case, each conversation, each course correction.

And if a multiverse does exist—if every choice spins off its own branch of law and fact—then our task remains the same: to verify truth within the world we inhabit. That is the discipline of both science and justice: to make this reality coherent before chasing another. We cannot hear all echoes, but we can listen closely to the one that answers back.

So perhaps consciousness itself is a courtroom of possibilities, and verification the gavel that selects among them.  Our measurements, our rulings, our acts of understanding—they all leave an interference pattern behind. The best we can do is make that pattern intelligible, compassionate, and, when possible, reproducible.  Law and physics alike remind us that truth is not perfection; it is resonance. When understanding and humility meet, the universe briefly agrees.

An artistic representation of a tree with numerous branches, each displaying a globe depicting Earth, symbolizing the concept of a multiverse with various parallel worlds.
Multiverse where different worlds split up and continue to exist, at least for a while, in parallel words.

🔹 VI. Conclusion

If there really are countless parallel universes, each branching from every quantum decision, then there may be trillions of versions of us walking through the fog of possibility. Some would differ by almost nothing—the same morning coffee, the same tie, the same docket call. But a few steps farther along the probability curve, the differences would grow strange. In one world I may have taken that other job offer; in another, argued a case that changed the law; and at some far edge of the bell curve, perhaps I’m lecturing on evidence to a class of AIs who regard me as a historical curiosity.

Can beings in the multiverse somehow communicate with each other? Is that what we sense as intuition—or déjà vu? Dreams, visions, whispers from adjacent worlds? Do the parallel lines sometimes cross? And since everything is quantum, how far does entanglement extend?

An artistic depiction of a person standing in a surreal environment filled with glowing pathways and mirrors, each reflecting a different version of themselves, symbolizing themes of quantum mechanics and parallel universes.
Are we living in many parallel worlds at once. What is the impact of quantum entanglement?

The future of law is being written not only in statutes or code, but in algorithms that can verify their own truth. Quantum physics has given us new metaphors—and perhaps new standards of evidence—for an age when certainty itself is probabilistic. The rule of law has always depended on verification; the difference now is that verification is becoming a property of nature itself, a measurable form of coherence between mind and matter. The physics lab and the courtroom are learning the same lesson: reality is persuasive only when it can be reproduced.

Yet even in a world of self-authenticating machines, truth still requires a listener. The universe may verify itself, but it cannot explain itself. That remains our role—to interpret the echoes, to decide which frequencies count as proof, and to do so with both rigor and mercy. So as the echoes grow louder, we keep listening.  And if you hear a low hum in the evidence room, don’t panic—it’s probably just the universe verifying itself.  But check the chain of custody anyway.

An abstract painting depicting diverse individuals interconnected by vibrant lines, symbolizing themes of recognition and connection. The use of blue tones creates a surreal atmosphere, illustrating a dynamic interplay between figures and their environment.
Niels Bohr: If you’re not shocked by quantum theory you have not understood it.  

🔹 Subscribe and Learn More

If these ideas intrigue you, follow the continuing conversation at e-DiscoveryTeam.com, where you can subscribe for email notices of future blogs, courses, and events. I’m now putting the finishing touches on a new online course, Quantum Law: From Entanglement to Evidence. It will expand on these themes by more discussion, speculation, and translating the science of uncertainty into practical tools, templates and guides for lawyers, judges, and technologists.

After all, the future of law will not belong to those who fear new tools, but to those who understand the evidence their universe produces.

Ralph C. Losey is an attorney, educator, and author of e-DiscoveryTeam.com, where he writes about artificial intelligence, quantum computing, evidence, e-discovery, and emerging technology in law.

© 2025 Ralph C. Losey. All rights reserved.



Quantum Echo: Nobel Prize in Physics Goes to Quantum Computer Trio (Two from Google) Who Broke Through Walls Forty Years Ago

October 24, 2025

Meanwhile, Even Bigger Breakthroughs by Google Continue

By Ralph Losey, October 21, 2025.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was just awarded to quantum physics pioneers John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for discoveries they made at UC Berkeley in the 1980s. They proved that quantum tunneling, where subatomic particles can break through seemingly impenetrable barriers, can also occur in the macroscopic world of electrical circuits. So yes, Schrödinger’s cat really could die.

A digital illustration featuring three scientists with varying facial expressions, posed in a futuristic setting, symbolizing breakthroughs in quantum computing. In the foreground, there is an artistic depiction of a cat with a skull overlay, creating a surreal contrast.
Quantum Physics Pioneers take home the Nobel Prize: John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis. All images in this article are by Ralph Losey using AI image generation tools.

Their experiments showed that entire circuits can behave as single quantum objects, bridging the gap between theory and engineering. That breakthrough insight paved the way for construction of quantum computers, including the latest by Google.

Both Devoret and Martinis were recruited years ago by Google to help design its quantum processors. Although John Martinis (right, in the image above) recently departed to start his own company, Qolab, Michel Devoret (center) remains at Google Quantum AI as the Chief Scientist of Quantum Hardware. Last year, two other Google scientists, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis, shared a Nobel prize in chemistry for their groundbreaking work in AI.

Google is clearly on a roll here. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai joked in his congratulatory post on LinkedIn: “Hope Demis Hassabis and John Jumper are teaching you the secret handshake.”

A human hand shakes a holographic robotic hand in front of a quantum computer, with a Google logo in the background.
The secret handshake to Google’s Nobel Prizes is the combination of AI and Quantum.

🔹 Willow Breaks Through Its Own Barriers

Less than a year ago, Google’s new quantum chip, Willow, tunneled through its own barriers, performing in five minutes a calculation that would have taken ten septillion years (10²⁴) on the fastest classical supercomputers. That’s far longer than anyone’s estimate for the age of our universe—a good definition of mind-boggling.

This result led Hartmut Neven, director of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, to suggest it offers strong evidence for the many-worlds or multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics—the idea that computation may occur across near-infinite parallel universes. Neven and a number of leading researchers subscribe to this view.

I explored that seemingly crazy hypothesis in Quantum Leap: Google Claims Its New Quantum Computer Provides Evidence That We Live In A Multiverse (Jan 9, 2025). Oddly enough, it became my most-read article of all time—thank you, readers.

Today’s piece updates that story. The Nobel Prize recognition is icing on the cake, but progress has not slowed. Quantum computers—and the law—remain one of the most exciting frontiers in legal-tech. So much so that I’m developing a short online course on quantum computing and law, with more courses on prompt engineering for legal professionals coming soon. Subscribe to e-DiscoveryTeam.com to be notified when they launch.

The work of this year’s Nobel laureates—Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis—was done forty years ago, so delay in recognition is hardly unusual in this field. Perhaps someday Neven and other many-worlds interpreters of quantum physics will receive their own Nobel Prize for demonstrating multiverse-scale applications. In my view, far more evidence than speed alone will be required.

After all, it defies common sense to imagine, as the multiverse hypothesis suggests, that every quantum event splits reality, spawning a near-infinite array of universes. For example, one where Schrödinger’s cat is alive and another slightly different unoiverse where it is dead. It makes Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance seem tame by comparison.

An illustrated depiction of Schrödinger's cat concept, featuring a cartoon cat and a skeleton inside a wooden box, symbolizing the quantum mechanics thought experiment.
Spooky questions: Why are ‘you’ conscious in this particular universe? Are you dead in another?

In the meantime—whatever the true mechanism—quantum computers and AI are already producing tangible social and legal consequences in cryptography, cybercrime, and evidentiary law. See, The Quantum Age and Its Impacts on the Civil Justice System (Rand, April 29, 2025); Quantum-Readiness: Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography (NIST, NSA, August, 2023); Quantum Computing Explained (NIST 8/22/2025); but see, Keith Martin, Is a quantum-cryptography apocalypse imminent? (The Conversation , 6/2/25) (“Expert opinion is highly divided on when we can expect serious quantum computing to emerge,” with estimates ranging from imminent to 20 years or more.)

Whether you believe in the multiverse or not, the practical implications for law and technology are already arriving.

Abstract illustration representing the multiverse theory with multiple cosmic spheres and the text 'MULTIVERSE THEORY' and 'INFINITE PARALLEL UNIVERSES'.
Might this theory someday seem like common sense? Or will most Universes discard it as another ‘spooky’ idea of experimental scientists?

🔹 Atlantic Quantum Joins Google Quantum AI

On October 2, 2025, Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead, Google Quantum AI, announced in a short post titled “We’re scaling quantum computing even faster with Atlantic Quantum” that Google had just acquired. Atlantic Quantum is an MIT-founded startup developing superconducting quantum hardware. The announcement, written in Neven’s signature understated style, framed the deal as a practical step on Google’s long road toward “a large error-corrected quantum computer and real-world applications.”

Neven explained that Atlantic Quantum’s modular chip stack, which integrates qubits and superconducting control electronics within the cryogenic stage, will allow Google to “more effectively scale our superconducting qubit hardware.” That phrase may sound routine to non-engineers, but it represents a significant leap in design philosophy: merging computation and control at the cold stage reduces signal loss, simplifies architecture, and makes modular scaling—the key to fault-tolerant machines—realistically achievable. This is another great acquisition by Google.

Independent reporting quickly confirmed the deal’s importance. In Atlantic Quantum Joins Google Quantum AI, The Quantum Insider’s Matt Swayne summarized the deal succinctly:

• Google Quantum AI has acquired Atlantic Quantum, an MIT-founded startup developing superconducting quantum hardware, to accelerate progress toward error-corrected quantum computers. . . .
• The deal underscores a broader industry trend of major technology companies absorbing research-intensive startups to advance quantum computing, a field still years from large-scale commercial deployment.

The article noted that the integration of Atlantic Quantum’s modular chip-stack technology into Google’s program was aimed at one of quantum computing’s toughest engineering hurdles: scaling systems to become practical and fault-tolerant.

The MIT-born startup, founded in 2021 by a group of physicists determined to push superconducting design beyond incremental improvements, focused on embedding control electronics directly within the quantum processor. That approach reduces noise, simplifies wiring, and makes modular expansion far more realistic. For another take on the Atlantic story, see Atlantic Quantum and Google Quantum AI are “Joining Up” (Quantum Computing Report, 10/02/25).

These articles place the transaction within a broader wave of global investment in quantum technologies. Large-scale commercial deployment may still be years away but the industry has already entered a phase of consolidation. Research-heavy startups are increasingly being absorbed by major technology companies, a predictable evolution in a field defined by extraordinary capital demands and complex technical challenges.

For Google, the acquisition is less about headlines and more about infrastructure control, owning every layer of the superconducting stack from design to fabrication. For the industry, it signals that the next phase of quantum development will likely follow the same arc as classical computing: early-stage innovation absorbed by large, well-capitalized firms that can bear the cost of scaling.

For lawyers and regulators, that pattern has familiar consequences: intellectual-property concentration, antitrust scrutiny, export-control compliance, and the evidentiary standards that will eventually govern how outputs from such corporate-owned quantum systems are regulated and presented in court.

An illustration depicting the concept of innovation in the technology industry, contrasting 'Early-Stage Innovation' represented by small fish and a light bulb, with 'Large, Well-Capitalized Firms' represented by a shark featuring the Google logo. The background includes circuit patterns, symbolizing the tech ecosystem.
Familiar pattern and legal issues continue in our Universe.

🔹 Willow and the Many-Worlds Question

Before the Nobel bell rang in Stockholm, Google’s Quantum AI group had already changed the conversation with its Willow processor.

In my earlier piece on Willow’s mind-bending computations, I quoted Hartmut Neven’s ‘parallel universes’ framing to describe its behavior. Some heard music; others heard marketing. Others, like me, saw trouble ahead.

The Nobel Prize did not validate the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, nor did it disprove it. Neven has not backed away from the theory, nor have others, and Neven has just gotten the best talent from MIT to join his group. What the Nobel Prize did confirm—beyond any reasonable doubt—is that macroscopic superconducting circuits, at a size you can see, can exhibit genuine quantum behavior under controlled laboratory conditions. That is the solid foundation a judge or regulator can stand on: devices now exist in our world that generate outputs with quantum fingerprints reproducible enough to test and verify.

Meanwhile, the frontier continues to move. In September 2025, researchers at UNSW Sydney demonstrated entanglement between two atomic nuclei separated by roughly twenty nanometers, See, “New entanglement breakthrough links cores of atoms, brings quantum computers closer” (The Conversation, Sept. 2025). Twenty nanometers is not big, but it is large enough to measure.

Moreover, even though the electrical circuits themselves are large enough to photograph, the quantum energy was not. That could only be measured indirectly. The researchers used coupled electrons as what lead scientist Professor Andrea Morello called “telephones” to pass quantum correlations and make those measurements.

An artistic representation of quantum entanglement, featuring glowing atomic particles connected by luminous paths, illustrating the complex interactions in quantum mechanics.
Electrons acting like telephones passing quantum correlations on measurable scales.

The telephone metaphor is apt. It captures the engineering ambition behind the result—connecting quantum rooms with wires, not whispers. Whispers don’t echo. Entanglement is not a philosophical idea; it is a measurable resource that can be distributed, controlled, and eventually commercialized. It can even call home.

For the legal system, this is where things become concrete. When entanglement leaves the lab and enters communications or sensing devices, courts will be asked to evaluate evidence that can be measured and described but cannot be seen directly. The question will no longer be “Is this real?” but “How do we authenticate what can be measured but not observed?”

That’s the moment when the physics of quantum control becomes the jurisprudence of evidence—and it’s coming faster than most practitioners realize.

A surreal painting depicting several figures whispering to each other in an arched, dimly lit setting, with wave-like patterns of light radiating from a central source.
Whispers Don’t Echo.

🔹 Defining the Echo: When Evidence Repeats With a Slight Accent

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics has always sat on the thin line between physics and philosophy. First proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett, it replaces the familiar ‘collapse‘ of the wave-function with a more radical notion: every quantum event splits reality into separate branches, each continuing independently. Some brilliant physicists take it seriously; others reject it; many remain agnostic. Courts need not resolve that debate. For law, the relevant question is simpler: can a party show a method that reliably connects a claimed quantum mechanism to a particular output? If yes, the court’s job is to hear the evidence. If not, the court’s job is to exclude it.

In its early decades, the idea was mostly dismissed as metaphysical excess. Then  Bryce DeWittDavid DeutschMax Tegmark and Sean Carroll each found ways to refine and defend it. David Deutsch, known as the Father of Quantum Comnputing, first argued that quantum computers might actually use this multiplicity to perform computations—each universe branch carrying part of the load. See e.g., Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes–and Its Implications (Penguin, 1997) (Chapter 9, Quantum Computers). Deutsch even speculates in his next (2011) book The Beginning of Infinity (pg. 294) that some fiction, such as alternate history, could occur somewhere in the multiverse, as long as it is consistent with the laws of physics.

The many-world’s argument, once purely theoretical, gained traction after Google’s Willow experiments. Hartmut Neven’s reference to “parallel universes” was not an assertion of proof but a shorthand for describing interference effects that defy classical intuition. It is what he believes was happening—and that opinion carries weight because he works with quantum computers every day.

When quantum behavior became experimentally measurable in superconducting circuits that were large enough to photograph, the Everett question—’Are we branching universes or sampling probabilities?‘—stopped being rhetorical. The debate moved from thought experiment to instrument design. Engineers now face what philosophers only imagined: how to measure, stabilize, and interpret outcomes that occur across many possible worlds and never converge on a single, deterministic path.

For the law, the relevance lies not in metaphysics but in method. Whether the universe splits or probabilities collapse, the data these machines produce are inherently probabilistic—repeatable only within margins, each time with a slight accent. The courtroom analog to wave-function collapse is the evidentiary demand for reproducibility. If the physics no longer promises identical outputs, the law must decide what counts as reliable sameness—echoes with an accent.

That shift from metaphysics to methodology is the lawyer’s version of a measurement problem. It’s not about believing in the multiverse. It’s about learning how to authenticate evidence that depends on it.

A vibrant abstract representation of quantum physics, featuring concentric circles and spheres radiating in a spectrum of colors, symbolizing subatomic particles and quantum behavior.
Repeatable measurements through parallel universes to explain quantum computer calculations. Crazy but true?

🔹 The Law Listens: Authenticating Echoes in Practice

If each quantum record is an echo, the law’s task is to decide which echoes can be trusted. That requires method, not metaphysics. The legal system already has the tools—authentication, replication, expert testimony—but they need recalibration for an age when precision itself is probabilistic.

1. Authentication in context.
Under Rule 901(b)(9), evidence generated by a process or system must be shown to produce accurate results. In a quantum context, that showing might include the type of qubit, its error-correction protocol, calibration logs, environmental controls, and the precise code path that produced the output. The burden of proof doesn’t change; only the evidentiary ingredients do.

2. Replication hearings.
In classical computing, replication is binary—either a hash matches, or it doesn’t. In quantum systems, replication becomes statistical. The question is no longer “Can this be bit-for-bit identical?” but “Does this fall within the accepted variance?” Probabilistic systems demand statistical fidelity, not sameness. A replication hearing becomes a comparison of distributions, not exact strings of bits.

Similar logic already guides quantum sensing and metrology, where entanglement and superposition improve precision in measuring magnetic fields, time, and gravitational effects. See Quantum sensing and metrology for fundamental physics (NSF, 2024); Review of qubit-based quantum sensing (Springer, 2025); Advances in multiparameter quantum sensing and metrology (arXiv, 2/24/25); Collective quantum enhancement in critical quantum sensing (Nature, 2/22/25). Those readings vary from one run to the next, yet the variance itself confirms the physics—each measurement is a statistically faithful echo of the same underlying reality. The variances are within a statistically acceptable range of error.

An abstract illustration showing a silhouette of a person standing next to a swirling vortex surrounded by circular shapes and geometric lines, representing concepts of quantum mechanics and the multiverse.
Each measurements is slightly different but similar enough to be statistically faithful echoes of the same underlying reality.

🔹 Two Examples from the Quantum Frontier

1. Quantum Chemistry In Practice.

One of the most mature quantum applications today is the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm used to estimate the ground-state energy of molecules. See, The Variational Quantum Eigensolver: A review of methods and best practices (Phys. Rep., 2023); Greedy gradient-free adaptive variational quantum algorithms on a noisy intermediate scale quantum computer (Nature, 5/28/25). Also see, Distributed Implementation of Variational Quantum Eigensolver to Solve QUBO Problems (arXiv, 8/27/25); How Does Variational Quantum Eigensolver Simulate Molecules? (Quantum Tech Explained, YouTube video, Sept. 2025).

VQE researchers routinely run the same circuit hundreds of times; each iteration yields slightly different energy readings because of noise, calibration drift, and quantum fluctuations. Yet the outputs consistently cluster around a stable baseline, confirming both the accuracy of the physical model and the reliability of the machine itself.

Now picture a pharmaceutical patent dispute where one party submits quantum-derived binding data for a new molecule. The opposing side demands replication. A court applying Rule 702 may not expect identical numbers—but it could require expert testimony showing that results consistently fall within a scientifically accepted margin of error. If they do, that should become a legally sufficient echo.

This is reminiscent of prior disputes e-discovery concerning the use of AI to find relevant documents. It has been accepted by all courts that perfection, such as 100% recall, is never required, but reasonable efforts are required. Judge Andrew Peck, Hyles vNew York City, No. 10 Civ. 3119 (AT)(AJP), 2016 WL 4077114 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 1, 2016). This also follows the official commentary of Rule 702, on expert testimony, where “perfection is not required.” Fed. R. Evid. 702, Advisory Committee Note to 2023 Amendment.

The reasonable efforts can be proven by numerics and testimony. See for instance my writings in the TAR Course: Fifteenth Class- Step Seven – ZEN Quality Assurance Tests (e-Discovery Team, 2015) (Zero Error Numerics); ei-Recall (e-Discovery Team, 2015); Some Legal Ethics Quandaries on Use of AI, the Duty of Competence, and AI Practice as a Legal Specialty (May, 2024).

An illustration emphasizing the phrase 'Reasonable efforts required, not perfection,' featuring a checklist with a checkmark, scales of justice, and a prohibition symbol.
There is no perfect case, evidence or efforts. In reality, ‘perfect is the enemy of the good.’

2. Quantum-Secure Archives.

As quantum computing and quantum cryptography advance, most (but not all) of today’s encryption will become obsolete. This means the vast amount of encrypted data stored in corporate and governmental archives—maintained for regulatory, evidentiary, and operational purposes—may soon be an open book to attackers. Yes, you should be concerned.

Rich DuBose and Mohan Rao, Harvest now, decrypt later: Why today’s encrypted data isn’t safe forever (Hashi Corp., May 21, 2025) explain:

Most of today’s encryption relies on mathematical problems that classical computers can’t solve efficiently — like factoring large numbers, which is the foundation of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithm, or solving discrete logarithms, which are used in Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). Quantum computers, however, could solve these problems rapidly using specialized techniques such as Shor’s Algorithm, making these widely used encryption methods vulnerable in a post-quantum world.

Also see, Dan Kent, Quantum-Safe Cryptography: The Time to Start Is Now (Gov.Tech., 4/30/25) and Amit Katwala, The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid (Wired, Mar. 24, 2025), warning that cybersecurity analysts already call this future inflection point Q-Day—the day a  quantum computer can crack the most widely used encryption. As Katwala writes:

On Q-Day, everything could become vulnerable, for everyone: emails, text messages, anonymous posts, location histories, bitcoin wallets, police reports, hospital records, power stations, the entire global financial system.

Most responsible organizations with large archives of sensitive data have been preparing for Q-Day for years. So too have those on the other side—nation-states, intelligence services, and organized criminal groups—who are already harvesting encrypted troves today to decrypt later. See, Roger Grimes, Cryptography Apocalypse: Preparing for the Day When Quantum Computing Breaks Today’s Crypto (Wiley, 2019). The race for quantum supremacy is on.

Now imagine a company that migrates its document-management system to post-quantum cryptography in 2026. A year later, a breach investigation surfaces files whose verification depends on hybrid key-exchange algorithms and certificate chains. The plaintiff calls them anomalies; the defense calls them echoes. The court won’t choose sides by theory—it will follow the evidence, the logs, and the math.

An artistic representation of an hourglass with celestial spheres and swirling galaxies, symbolizing the concept of time and the multiverse in quantum physics.
The metrics are what should matter, not the many theories

🔹 Building the Quantum Record

Judicial findings and transparency. Courts can adapt existing frameworks rather than invent new ones. A short findings order could document:
(a) authentication steps taken;
(b) observed variance;
(c) expert consensus on reliability; and
(d) scope limits of admissibility.
Such transparency builds a common-law record—the first body of quantum-forensic precedent. I predict it will be coming soon to a universe near you!

Chain of custody for the probabilistic age. Future evidence protocols may pair traditional logs with variance ranges, confidence intervals, and error budgets. Discovery rules could require disclosure of device calibration history, firmware versions, and known noise parameters. The data once confined to labs will become essential for authentication.

The law doesn’t need new virtues for quantum evidence; it needs old ones refined. Transparency, documentation, and replication remain the gold standard. What changes is the expectation of sameness. The goal is no longer perfect duplication, but faithful resonance: the trusted echo that still carries truth through uncertainty.

An artistic depiction of a swirling vortex, featuring an hourglass shape with vibrant colors, symbolizing the concept of multiverses and quantum physics. Small planets are depicted within the flow, representing various realities branching out from a central point of light.
Metrics carry the truth through uncertainty.

🔹 Conclusion: The Sound of Evidence

The Nobel Committee rang the bell. Google’s engineers adding instruments. Labs in Sydney and elsewhere wired new rooms together. The rest of us—lawyers, paralegals, judges, legal-techs, investigators—must learn how to listen for echoes without hearing ghosts. That means resisting hype, insisting on method, and updating our checklists to match what the devices actually do.

Eight months ago in Quantum Leap, I described a canyon where a single strike of an impossible calculation set the walls humming. This time, the sound came from Stockholm. If the next echo is from quantum evidence in your courtroom—perhaps as a motion in limine over non-identical logs—don’t panic. Listen for the rhythm beneath the noise. The law’s task is to hear the pattern, not silence the world.

Science, like law, advances by listening closely to what reality whispers back. The Nobel Committee just honored three physicists for demonstrating that quantum behavior can be engineered, measured, and replicated—its fingerprints recorded even when the phenomenon itself remains invisible. Their achievement marks a shift from theory to tested evidence, a shift the courts will soon confront as well.

When engineers speak of quantum advantage, they mean a moment when machines perform tasks that classical systems cannot. The legal system will have its own version: a time when quantum-derived outputs begin to appear in contracts, forensic analysis, and evidentiary records. The challenge will not be cosmic. It will be procedural. How do you test, authenticate, and trust results that vary within the bounds of physics itself?

The answer, as always, lies in method. Law does not require perfection; it requires transparency and proof of process. When the next Daubert hearing concerns a quantum model rather than a mass spectrometer, the same questions will apply: Was the procedure sound? Were the results reproducible within accepted error? Were the foundations laid? The physics may evolve, but the evidentiary logic remains timeless.

In the end, what matters is not whether the universe splits or probabilities collapse. What matters is whether we can recognize an honest echo when we hear one—and admit it into evidence.

An artistic representation of a cosmic hourglass surrounded by swirling galaxies and planets, symbolizing time, the universe, and the concept of the multiverse.
It is only a matter of time before quantum generated evidence seeks admission to your world.

🔹 Postscript.

Minutes before this article was published Google announced an important new discovery called “Quantum ECHO.” Yes, same name as this article, written by Ralph Losey with no advance notice from Google of the discovery or name. A spooky entanglement, perhaps? Ralph will publish a sequel soon that spells out what Google has done now. In the meantime, here is Google’s announcement by Hartmut Neven\ and Vadim Smelyanskiy, Our Quantum Echoes algorithm is a big step toward real-world applications for quantum computing (Google, 10/22/25).

🔹 Subscribe and Learn More

If this exploration of Quantum Echoes and evidentiary method has sparked your curiosity, you can find much more at e-DiscoveryTeam.com — where I continue to write about artificial intelligence, quantum computing, evidence, e-discovery, and the future of law. Go there to subscribe and receive email notices of new blogs and upcoming courses, and special events — including an online course, with a working title Quantum Law: From Entanglement to Evidence,‘ that will expand on the ideas introduced here. It will discuss how quantum physics and AI converge in the practice of law, from authentication and reliability to discovery and expert testimony.

That program will be followed by two other, longer online courses that are also near completion:

  • Beginner “GPT-4 Level” Prompt Engineering for Legal Professionals,’ a practical foundation in AI literacy and applied reasoning.
  • Advanced “GPT-5 Level” Prompt Engineering for Legal Professionals,’ an in-depth study of prompt design, model evaluation, and AI ethics.

All courses are part of my continuing effort to help the legal profession adapt responsibly to the next wave of technology — with integrity, experience and whatever wisdom I may have accidentally gathered from a long life on Earth.

A contemplative figure stands in a futuristic hallway lined with framed portals, each leading to different cosmic landscapes, while a bright light emanates from above.
Ralph looking back on the many worlds of technology he has been in. What a long, strange trip its been.

Subscribe at e-DiscoveryTeam.com for notices of new articles, course announcements, and research updates.

Because the future of law won’t be written by those who fear new tools, but by those who understand the evidence they produce.


Ralph C. Losey is an attorney, educator, and author of e-DiscoveryTeam.com, where he writes about artificial intelligence, quantum computing, evidence, e-discovery, and emerging technology in law.

© 2025 Ralph C. Losey. All rights reserved.


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