Quantum for Whom? Situating Ethical Risks in Quantum Technologies’ Innovation Context

Abstract

Although quantum technologies (QT) are still in their early stages of development, their ethical foundations are already being shaped by their innovation context. While earlier works have discussed the ethical implications of this emerging field, the contextualization of these risks in broader socio-technical dynamics has received less attention. Drawing on interdisciplinary sources, I present a critical interpretive literature review of QT’s ethical challenges, situating them within the technologies’ broader socio-technical context and showing how innovation dynamics and socio-political factors contribute to shaping their normative futures. While many of QT’s ethical challenges stem from anticipated technical affordances, these risks must also be understood through broader socio-technical dynamics, opening valuable lines of inquiry into who sets research priorities, whose interests are served, and what alternative futures are foreclosed. Through expanding our view of QT’s ethical challenges towards the structural conditions that inscribe, and sometimes intensify them, we gain a better understanding of the normative assumptions being embedded into the field, elucidating how these narrow the space for alternative forms of innovation. Insights suggest that, without critical reflection, the hegemonic innovation trajectory risks constraining democratic oversight and ethical reflection precisely at a foundational moment, when QT’s pathways are being locked in.