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The Potential Impact Of Quantum-Level Dynamics On Human Resources

Forbes Human Resources Council

Dr. Pravir Malik is the Founder and Chief Technologist of Deep Order Technologies and QIQuantum.

The jury is still out on the potential impact that quantum technologies could have on HR one day in the future. If the current trajectory of expected development is taken into account, then quantum technologies could at least hold the potential to help solve human resource problems with a large number of variables that perhaps even change in real time.

The current state of quantum technologies, however, founded on the belief that nature is probabilistic, has been focused on the development of a probabilistic-quantum computer. The problem with this approach is that, by definition, it will always remain removed from actual quantum-level dynamics. So it is highly unlikely that the quantum computer and the continuing and sizeable investments in related software development will actually be able to make sense of or manipulate the core quantum-level dynamics. Such dynamics include superposition and entanglement, which are envisioned to be at the heart of massive computational advantages.

That aside, consider the following scenario. A company is going to hire a new employee. The hiring team would like to be able to get a sense of the future impact that the employee may have on the company. There are many variables to consider in this situation, especially since the circumstance itself is going to change as the employee advances through their employee lifecycle. Questions have to do with how the employee will get along with others, what kinds of impacts they may have on different situations, and how they may be able to influence other potential leaders in the company so that they, in turn, may have an impact on the market, and so on.

Pretty quickly, the complexity of the shifting scenarios, with a large number of micro and macro variables to be considered, and their potential outcomes becomes overwhelming. This is where quantum computation could potentially make a difference in processing all the complexities, working through many possible solutions, to come up with the likely future impact of the employee and, therefore, whether they should be hired.

Of course, quantum technology dealing with the smallest measurable units possible is, by definition, flirting with possibilities that escape the eye. It is, therefore, on the borderline of what can be considered mysterious. This is where I believe its biggest impacts could come from. After all, digital computing has already dealt with the plethora of applications that can be reasonably conceived by playing with and even shifting visible reality.

Phenomena like superposition and entanglement, though, are supposed to describe the dynamics of the invisible.

Superposition can be thought of as a variable or possibility at the quantum level having an infinite number of hidden states, of which one becomes materially real when meaningfully probed into. Imagine the application of superposition. There could be many different skills that exist latently or as a possibility, and due to deliberate focus on the part of human resources, the desired subset of these is manifested or made real in a target employee group.

This could become invaluable if a company is entering a new market, is faced with an unexpected challenge, is trying to get a new hire class up to speed or just requires a particular type of change to be worked through faster, for example.

Entanglement can be thought of as the deep linking of two possibilities or states at the quantum level so that now one instantaneously influences the other, even without any need for visible communication. Think of it this way—nobody ever has to tell the water in a bottle, whether in China or the U.S., how it should exist in different circumstances. Yet the water, regardless of where it is, will react in the same way in similar situations. One can say that the water in the bottle has been entangled.

Now consider consistency in expressed behavior in possibly controversial or legally volatile issues. If entanglement between remote teams or employees has taken place, then lessons learned in one place would instantaneously be available in another.

Of course, there are many such processes of nature that challenge our understanding, but they clearly exist and have been around for a long time. With phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, we are beginning to make that which was considered invisible and magical, visible and understandable. The fact that phenomena such as superposition and entanglement are already part of nature means that they can possibly be leveraged now, even without access to quantum technologies.

If skill sets exist in some information space, then it should be possible to tap and assimilate them immediately. Perhaps this could be done by changing our biases by intentional neuroplasticity so that newly formed lenses may provide quicker access to needed skill sets. Or perhaps such newly formed lenses could also allow us to access that part of nature where it becomes possible to share insight at a distance, even without quantum technology, in an act of entanglement.

Even without access to quantum technologies, human resources as a discipline could make quantum leaps.


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