Ethical Exploration in the Quantum AI Era: From Entangled Thinking to Cross-Cultural Intelligence

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum technologies is increasingly framed as a decisive technological rupture. Quantum Artificial Intelligence (QAI)—broadly understood as AI methods enhanced by quantum computing or quantum information processing—promises dramatic speedups for optimization, simulation, and machine learning. Yet the same promise also intensifies ethical uncertainty: QAI systems may amplify opacity, accelerate decision cycles beyond human oversight, and generate systemic risks that propagate across tightly coupled socio-technical networks. This paper argues that conventional ethics approaches—often centered on linear causality, individual agency, and localized harm—become insufficient as QAI pushes AI governance into domains characterized by nonlinearity, nonlocal correlation, and emergent behavior. To address this challenge, we develop an “entangled worldview” as a meta-ethical orientation inspired by quantum entanglement’s philosophical implications: interdependence over isolation, correlation over separability, and holistic evaluation over fragmented analysis. We then re-examine cross-cultural ethical resources—especially Aristotelian virtue ethics and Confucian role ethics—as complementary traditions that can be reactivated for QAI governance. Through three domain cases (autonomous mobility, healthcare/precision medicine, and fintech/ market systems), we show how QAI ethical issues arise simultaneously at the levels of behavior (decision outputs), responsibility (accountability across lifecycle and institutions), and relationships (human–machine coexistence and socio-emotional manipulation). Finally, we propose a symbiotic framework for QAI ethics that combines ethics-by-design, traceable accountability, and participatory cross-cultural governance, aiming to align technological development with human dignity, social justice, and sustainable global well-being.