Quantum for Whom? Situating Ethical Risks in Quantum Technologies’ Innovation Context
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12954081 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M A Palacios Barea (0000-0001-9542-599X, Delft University of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | NanoEthics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1871-4757 • E-ISSN: 1871-4765 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11569-026-00496-1 |
| OpenAlex | W7126032129 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 48 |
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
Context (archaeology · Contextualization · Deliberation · Futures contract · Normative · Philosophy of science · Philosophy of technology · Responsible Research and Innovation · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Quantum Mechanics and Applications · Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata
Designs on Nature
Export Controls as Innovation Marketing? Sociotechnical Imaginaries in the Ringfencing of Quantum Technologies
Ethics of Quantum Computing
Technology in the Age of Innovation
The objects of technology assessment. Hermeneutic extension of consequentialist reasoning
Societal implications of quantum technologies through a technocriticism of quantum key distribution
Quantum Technologies and Society
Global care ethics
A critical hermeneutic reflection on the paradigm-level assumptions underlying responsible innovation
Containing the Atom
Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America
Beyond the Bad Actor Narrative
Digital Disaster, Cyber Security, and the Copenhagen School
The ethics of algorithms
Why putting artificial intelligence ethics into practice is not enough
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |