Brussels, 20 April 2023—The emergence of powerful new capabilities in large AI models, such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), underscores the critical need to continuously improve and update technology impact assessment tools, ensuring they keep pace with rapid technological development. As defined in recent scholarship, technology impact assessment is the systematic process of monitoring and determining the unintended, indirect, or delayed societal impacts of a future technological innovation. Crucially, it is also about capitalizing on opportunities and enabling responsible innovation from the outset.
An article by Stanford Law’s Mauritz Kop on this topic is also featured on the European Commission's Futurium website.
Shaping the Quantum Innovation Process
Quantum Impact Assessments (QIAs) are emerging as vital practical tools to facilitate the responsible adoption of quantum technologies. There are several related approaches to this assessment: (1) interactive QIA, which seeks to influence and shape the innovation process; (2) constructive QIA, where social issues guide the design of the technology from its earliest stages; and (3) real-time QIA, which connects scientific R&D with social sciences and policy from the start, before a technology becomes locked-in.
Often taking the form of codes of conduct, best practices, roadmaps, and physics de-risking tools, QIA instruments can be used by governments, industry, and academia. These soft law toolsallow stakeholders to explore how current technological developments affect the world we live in and to proactively shape the innovation process toward beneficial, societally robust outcomes.
Exploratory Quantum Technology Assessment
Implementing interdisciplinary, expert-based QIAs can help raise awareness about the ethical, legal, socio-economic, and policy (ELSPI) dimensions of quantum technology, including quantum-classical hybrid systems. For instance, QIAs cultivate a deeper understanding of the potential dual-use character of quantum technology, where beneficial applications (such as quantum sensing for medical diagnostics) can exist alongside potentially harmful ones (such as the same sensors being used for autocratic surveillance).
Building on the foundational work of the 2018 AI Impact Assessment developed by ECP | Platform voor de InformatieSamenleving chaired by Prof. Kees Stuurman, this work presents a prototype of a QIA instrument: the Exploratory Quantum Technology Assessment (EQTA). This pioneering initiative was made possible through a collaboration between the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy, Quantum Delta NL (QDNL), and ECP. The EQTA will be presented by Eline de Jong and Mauritz Kop at the inaugural Stanford Responsible Quantum Technology Conference in May 2023.
Guidance for Responsible Quantum Technology Implementation
The EQTA provides a comprehensive, practical step-by-step plan that encourages stakeholders to initiate a dialogue to clarify which ethical, legal, and social aspects are important in the creation and application of quantum systems and their interaction with classical technologies. This structured approach helps make the use of quantum technology—as well as the data and algorithms that power it—more transparent and accountable from an early stage.
Looking forward, establishing a risk-based legal-ethical framework in combination with standardization, certification, technology impact assessment, and life-cycle auditing of quantum-driven systems is crucial to stewarding society towards responsible quantum innovation. Mauritz Kop’s research group has written more on this framework in their seminal article Towards Responsible Quantum Technology (Harvard).
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