Quantum computing may still be in its infancy, but it is already taking shape as a technology able to tackle issues such as hunger, energy and health logistics far more efficiently than today’s tools. In 2024, the World Economic Forum and Accenture published the report Quantum for Society, identifying quantum applications with potential impact on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – from water quality monitoring and new solar cell design to the optimisation of energy and transport networks. UNESCO has also developed a policy on quantum science, inclusion and sustainability, warning of the risk of a “quantum divide” that could deepen technological inequality between countries.
A new kind of tech governance
A detailed analysis in Just Security shows how export controls by the United States, the EU and China are creating concentric circles of access to quantum technologies. The Global South risks being excluded from economic benefits, new security infrastructures and the ability to develop its own solutions. In response, a different way of thinking about tech governance is starting to take shape: anticipatory science diplomacy. The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) argues that physicists, diplomats and international organisations should sit around the same table before the technology matures, to decide collectively how it should be used.
In line with this approach, the Open Quantum Institute, hosted at CERN, has launched a multilateral initiative to align quantum computing with the SDGs. At the same time, EPFL’s Center for Quantum Science and Engineering is working with GESDA and the OQI on concrete use cases: quantum optimisation for food production in regions of South Africa, training students in “quantum and sustainability”, and designing small educational quantum computers based on nuclear magnetic resonance for countries in the Global South.
The same recipe for AI
More recently, we have begun to see attempts to bring this emerging form of scientific diplomacy into the field of generative AI. Last year, the OECD put forward a framework for anticipatory governance of AI, while the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence now serves as a global reference to guide AI development in line with human rights, inclusion and sustainability.
These steps are still tentative, but they point towards a possible convergence between science diplomacy, futures thinking and technology governance. In that emerging model, quantum computing is deliberately geared towards global public goods and conceived from the outset as a common good, rather than as another episode of technological frenzy for a privileged minority.
Generative AI is advancing more slowly in that direction, but it is clearly entering a constituent phase in Europe, in which its own governance architecture is being shaped – as highlighted by the international congress held last week in Madrid, where around fifty regulators, scholars and companies called for stronger governance to ensure the socially responsible management of this technology.
This article is republished from Futuribles. Here's the original article in Spanish and English.