Democratization of Quantum Technologies

As quantum technologies (QT) have been becoming more and more realized, their potential impact on and relation with society has been developing into a pressing issue for exploration. In this paper, we investigate the topic of democratization in the context of QT, particularly quantum computing. The paper contains three main sections. First, we briefly introduce different theories of democracy (participatory, representative, and deliberative), and how the concept of democratization can be formulated with respect to these frameworks. Second, we give an overview of how the concept of democratization is utilized by the actors in the QT field. Democratization is mainly adopted by companies working on quantum computing and used in a very narrow understanding of the concept. We provide a discussion on where to locate this formulation of democratization used by the QT community within the overall conceptual landscape of democracy theories. Third, we explore various narratives and counter-narratives concerning democratization in QT and we propose a five-step approach to operationalizing the concept of democratization with respect to different theories of democracy. Finally, we explore the concept of democratization in QT beyond quantum computing. In conclusion, we argue that although the ongoing efforts in the democratization of QT are necessary steps towards the democratization of this set of emerging technologies, they should not be accepted as sufficient to argue that QT is a democratized field. We argue that more reflexivity and responsiveness regarding the narratives and actions adopted by the actors in the QT field and making the underlying assumptions of ongoing efforts on democratization of QT can result in a better technology for the society.