Abstract
Quantum technology promises to shift the boundaries of what machines can do. Advancing our capacities to acquire, process and transmit information, quantum technology has the potential to impact nearly all domains in society. Therefore, we should start anticipating the future role of quantum technology and the ethical, legal, social and policy implications that come with it. One way of informing ourselves about how to do this is by making use of historical analogies. The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) developed a framework for embedding so-called system technologies into society based on a historical analysis of how society dealt with such technologies in the past. In this article, the conceptual framework of system technologies is reinterpreted as an anticipatory strategy to prepare society for quantum technology and vice versa. The proposed strategy has five dimensions: (1) countering unrealistic perceptions (demystification), (2) investing in a facilitating socio-technical environment (contextualisation), (3) engaging stakeholders and civil society (engagement), (4) creating flexible frameworks (regulation) (5) and developing international ‘quantum diplomacy’ (positioning). By actively engaging in these processes, society enables itself to guide the development of quantum technology and its impact within society.
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Notes
In 2019, Google scientist claimed to have achieved quantum supremacy, providing evidence that their quantum computer ‘Sycamore’ is able to solve problems that are impossible to calculate classically (Arute et al., 2019).
Among them are the governments of the USA (Subcommittee on quantum information science, 2021), Canada (Sussman et al., 2019), China (Qiang et al., 2019), Japan (Yamamoto, 2019), South-Korea (Shim, 5 February 2019), Taiwan (Huang, 17 December 2020), India (Department of Science and Technology, n.d.), Russia (Schiermeier, 17 December 2019), the UK (UK Research and Innovation, 23 March 2015), Germany (Reuters, 11 May 2021), France (Le Monde & AFP, 21 January 2021), the Netherlands (QuTech, 9 April 2021) and the EU (Gibney, 2017), who all invested or announced investments in quantum science and technology.
In specific, quantum computers are, without proof however, believed to be able to solve a class of mathematical problems that the best classical computers cannot solve (quick enough). These so-called NP problems have no obvious structure, and no solution has been found to them yet. A famous example of this class is the travelling salesman problem.
When the car was first introduced, people would consider it to be a carriage without a horse, thereby not acknowledging the radically new characteristics of the automobile.
BQP stands for ‘bounded-error quantum polynomial time’, a class of computational problems that can be solved by quantum computers in polynomial time.
The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) is an independent strategic advisory body for government policy in the Netherlands. The council advises the Dutch government and Parliament on long-term strategic issues that are of great importance to society. The WRR provides science-based advice aimed at opening new perspectives and directions, changing problem definitions, setting new policy goals, investigating new resources for problem-solving, and enriching the public debate. In 2021, the WRR presented its advisory report ‘Mission AI. The New System Technology’. A summary of the report is available in English online at https://english.wrr.nl/publications/reports/2021/11/11/summary-mission-ai. The WRR expects to publish the full report in English by the end of 2022.
For an example of such a list-driven approach to the impact of quantum technology, see the World Economic Forum report ‘Quantum Computing Governance Principles’ (World Economic Forum, 2022).
In the case of AI, winters emerged due to research stagnation and the lack of successful applications. Disappointing results gave rise to an overall demoralisation concerning the potential of AI. In the case of quantum technology, the underlying quantum theory solidly grounds the field as it has proven to excellently describe physics at the micro-scale. In other words, quantum mechanics is not some fashionable theory. Although progress in the field of quantum technology has been both impressive and steady for the last years, the risk of a quantum winter should not be dismissed because the field could lose funding and interest when it could not live up to the expectations quick enough.
The most prominent classes of algorithms that have shown to be able to provide an advantage over classical algorithms are exemplified by two famous quantum algorithms dating from the 1990s: Shor’s factoring algorithm (1994) and Grover’s searching algorithm (1996). More recently, other techniques and hybrid methods that combine classical and quantum approaches have started to become more popular.
The same statement is made by Gill et al. (2022).
World Economic Forum (2022) highlighted risks related to accessibility, inclusiveness, equity and non-maleficence in its report on quantum computing governance principles.
See for example Verbeek (2008).
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The author is grateful to Ivo Knottnerus and Julia Rijssenbeek for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article, and to Tessel van Oirsouw for excellent editorial support.
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The author formerly worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). She is one of the authors of the official advisory report for the Dutch government about artificial intelligence that appeared in December 2022. Throughout this article, references are made to this report. The author wrote the current article in a personal capacity and did not represent any organisation nor did she receive funding or have any other competing interests to declare.
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de Jong, E. Own the Unknown: An Anticipatory Approach to Prepare Society for the Quantum Age. DISO 1, 15 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-022-00020-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-022-00020-4