Democratization of quantum technologies

An individual or group who interacts directly with a technology. For example, a system of electronic medical records might be designed for doctors and insurance companies (Friedman et al 2017, Friedman and Hendry 2019).

An individual or group who is impacted by a technology but does not directly interact with it. For example, many electronic medical systems are intentionally designed to be used exclusively by doctors and, depending on the country, by insurance agencies. This, naturally, will impact patients (Friedman et al 2017). Another example is when a small drone flies over a bystander, they may be bothered by its sound and presence and their privacy might be violated. In this case, the bystander would be an indirect stakeholder and the operator of the drone would be a direct stakeholder (Vernim et al 2022).

Still, regardless of the definition(s) used for the stakeholder populations chosen to be elicited, the functionally significant point is that stakeholder groups are identified and given consideration in information, consultation, and engagement processes. Particularly given their role concerning the creation and delivery of policy decisions guiding science and technology innovation rather than in the direct day-to-day technical work of experts.

Although often used interchangeably, deliberative and participatory democracy have unique elements despite sharing many commonalities. The distinction is important not only for QT designers but for policymakers as well. There is a third conception of democracy, less referred to within the realm of science and technology policy but in general still more relevant than the other two, and that is representative democracy.

The number of participants that are included, the type(s) of participation, as well as the method used to select participants differ between deliberative, participatory, and representative democracy theories. For one way of distinguishing them, see table 1:

In their Gastil and Levine (2005), Gastil and Levine define deliberative democracy as that which 'strengthens citizen voices in governance by including people of all races, classes, ages and geographies in deliberations that directly affect public decisions.' A basic idea is that political decision-making processes become more rational and their results more acceptable through the involvement of well-informed citizens and stakeholders in deliberation. This approach to the democratization of science became popular in academic literature during the 1980s with authors like Habermas (1981) and Mansbridge (1980).

Participatory democracy, on the other hand, has its roots in the civil rights movements that characterized the 1960s (Pateman 1970). The motivation behind this form of democracy was the demand by citizens, particularly by unrepresented groups, to have greater influence in public decision making processes. Participatory democracy differs from deliberative democracy in that its emphasis is not primarily on how citizens can influence established, usually representative decision making processes from the outside, but on how institutions can augment citizens' abilities and capacities to participate in decision making and make such participation more meaningful (Pateman 2012).

In representative democracy in the traditional sense, i.e. before the deliberative and participatory turns, deliberation was mostly non-public and limited to elected representatives, invited experts, and rather small numbers of interest groups as only involved stakeholders. However, this constellation is not typical of most political discourse on science, technology and innovation. Participants in this discourse tend to have less clear roles than participants in the core processes of representative democracy (e.g. in parliament) and may be (even) less representative of society in general and of affected populations in particular than in other policy areas—which is an argument for including more deliberative and participatory mechanisms in the system. (Grunwald et al 2006, Brown 2009, Disch 2009).

In science policy, two major loci for democratization pathways can be distinguished (see table 2), one on the front end (access to education; science funding) and one on the back end (open access publishing; accountability).

On the front end, opening up access to education can strengthen democratic knowledge societies. Likewise, democratic (and in particular deliberative and participatory) decision making concerning where funding is allocated can permit a form of public democratic engagement of what spheres of innovation should receive attention.

On the back end, open access publication available without costs to readers (despite the epistemic hurdles in comprehension) is a key endeavor currently being undertaken (see Else 2021).

Accountability, however, remains a more nebulous and abstract modality for democratization in innovation. Within the responsible research and innovation literature, scholars have noted that innovation spheres have mostly remained separated from citizen engagement (Stahl et al 2021). Owen et al (2021) argue that this separation is the consequence of innovation spheres not sufficiently aiming to be a 'site for politics', i.e. a domain where deliberation, continuous debate, negotiation, and discussion concerning how innovation should be governed as well as what goals innovation should be driving towards.

The concept of accountability is dealt with in a substantial corpus in the philosophical literature concerning technology. Accountability has traditionally been described as a retrospective, backwards-looking form of responsibility (i.e. van de Poel 2011) or as a passive form of responsibility, more specifically as after-the-fact evaluation demanding justification which, consequently, provides the foundations for assigning blameworthiness (Pesch 2015). However, recently scholars have interpreted accountability such that it could have both an anticipatory and preventative conception. This is grounded on an understanding of accountability where there is an active relationship between stakeholders and a forum where the conduct of those stakeholders is uncovered, debated, and justified in continuous public dialogue (Bovens et al 2014, Santoni de Sio and Mecacci 2021).

Understanding accountability in this way permits greater synchronicity with normative political theory. In particular, contemporary understanding of representative democracy centers on the importance of accountability as a function of citizens' capacities to self-determination, ensuring that their representatives are responsive to their values, and to ensure that those representatives can be held accountable (Palumbo and Bellamy 2010) ³ . Intrinsic to this understanding of accountability is the notion that the representatives of citizens have a real impact on public decision making processes, and that, hence, these representatives who are responsible for facilitating those processes within institutions, must be sufficiently responsive to the citizens and their values (Schuppert 2014), and not too late in the process. As a consequence, what should arise to promote public dialogue are deliberative spheres where citizens are encouraged to make their voices heard in decision making processes with at least some connection to the relevant decision-making processes and some interaction between the represented and their representatives (Fung 2006, Grunwald et al 2006).

Still, this does not entail that such deliberative spheres are necessarily meaningful. It has thus been argued that participatory spheres should be created where real influence on policies can actually be exerted (Paterman 1970, pp 70–71). This, of course can lead to certain asymmetries in participatory spheres where Pareto distributions lead to certain individuals or groups who garner more influence and control to have, similar as in lobbyism, a disproportionate amount of decision making control, thus influencing policy outcomes often to their own benefit (Papadopoulos and Warin 2007). This, consequently, means that this understanding of accountability may reinforce existing spheres of influence and destabilize the equal opportunity of citizens and stakeholder groups to participate in public decision making concerning science, technology and innovation. However, there has been research that suggests that equitable forms of accountability can be designed into substantive forms of representation to ensure that policy outcomes reflect individuals or groups with less structural influence or power (Page et al 2013, Grimes and Esaiasson 2014). These forms of accountability include structural mechanisms to uncover and scrutinize potential conditions of power imbalances where certain agents or groups may cease to reflect the values of stakeholders in decision making arenas (McGeer and Pettit 2015).

Accountability thus concerns forward-looking governance frameworks, policy choices, spheres, and continuous mechanisms to check undue power asymmetries. If we aim to understand accountability viz. Normative political theory, then it becomes de facto multidimensional. It involves those who do the accounting and those who are accounted for, it provides the shared guidelines for how behaviors are to be reported, justified, and assessed, and, finally, how violations are to be sanctioned and how those sanctions are to be enforced ⁴ .

One final caveat to explore here might be the distinction between focusing on the instrumental and intrinsic value of democracy. One might presuppose that democracy as an intrinsic value should always prevail. We argue that this is not the case. Democratic approaches are not merely ideological, they have practical value for their adopters, especially in commercial and industrial contexts. Stakeholder engagement at an early stage might reduce the risk of a product being rejected at launch, hence enabling companies to invest higher amounts or the industrial designers to work more freely on the product. Similarly, widening the base of participation on the development of a technology can attract diverse talent to the field and support innovation processes to explore the section of the opportunity space that was previously inaccessible. Policies developed and implemented by companies to realize these outcomes de facto support democratization of a technology in general. However, it might be an open question whether this is acceptable when public policies are enacted where a democratic approach is adopted due to its instrumental value. A for-profit company utilizing deliberative processes to maximize the adoption of its software stack by its potential future user base should in essence be distinguishable from public bodies' attempts of including and informing stakeholders to support the democratic process.

The layer of accepting democracy as an intrinsic or instrumental value can be thought of as an additional dimension to the distinctions between having different theories of democracy, clear identification of direct and indirect stakeholders, and formulating compatibility between different modalities of action (back end and front end). This can be briefly described as whether utilization of a democratic approach for a situation is assumed due to its instrumental value (i.e. it would yield beneficial outcomes) or accepted as an intrinsic value. Some examples on how the same actions can be formulated with different values is given in table 3.

In summary, democracy cannot and should not be viewed as monolithic but rather as multi-faceted with various approaches that can be taken to open-up democratic modes in science and technology research and development. Here we have highlighted three approaches in democracy theory and practice as well as how they are of instrumental and intrinsic value. We have likewise highlighted some modalities of applied democratization in innovation.

In the following section, we will first focus on how the notion of democratization is used in the quantum computing field, and afterwards discuss narratives and actions that support or obstruct efforts of democratization.

In May 2016, IBM put the first quantum computer in the cloud (Mandelbaum 2021) for it to be accessed by anyone interested in this technology. Following this, they announced and developed Qiskit, an open-source software development kit for working with quantum computers at the level of circuits, pulses, and algorithms (Gambetta and Cross 2018). These efforts by IBM are still ongoing (Wootton et al 2021).

Briefly, IBM's efforts for education and outreach of quantum computing are ⁵ :

• First open access quantum computer in 2016.
• Over 100 M USD investment into quantum education efforts in the last five years.
• Three million people reached via tools like the Qiskit textbook, YouTube channel, hackathons, summer schools, and so on.
• IBM Quantum Internship accepts and trains 135 students yearly.

These efforts are mentioned in detail here, because this approach is adopted widely for discussing the democratization of quantum computing, which puts a strong emphasis on putting quantum computers in the cloud and providing access to the widest possible range of users, and acknowledged in the literature (Ten Holter et al 2022). Similar efforts and approaches to IBM in this field are adopted by others in the community. Quantum computing hardware developers such as D-Wave and Xanadu are also quite actively supporting the open cloud access model. D-Wave has an applications database with more than 250 early quantum applications available ⁶ . Xanadu has a programmable photonic processor in the cloud that achieved quantum computational advantage (Madsen et al 2022). Providing access through the cloud and supporting this access with complementary (such as educational or case-study based industry-oriented) activities can be understood as the main arc of the democratization as it is conceived of in the quantum computing field.

Here nuanced distinctions can be made between the uses of the terms 'democratization' and 'democratizing access,' and between the intended target groups. Although sometimes they are used interchangeably (Grossi 2021), these two terms signify different concepts, as democratizing access can be a part of the democratization efforts, but democratization is a concept that (potentially) encompasses a wider set of actions, including but not limited to engagement with indirect stakeholders.

Similarly, some in the field advocate that democratization is for anyone with an internet connection (IonQ 2022), while others posit it as primarily for developers and researchers (Osaba et al 2022, p 55808), and sometimes particularly for non-quantum experts (Liscouski 2021).

Arguments for the necessity of democratization in quantum computing from a pragmatic point of view usually rely on the phenomenon of workforce or talent shortage (NSTC 2021, 2022). There are already studies on describing the landscape of the quantum workforce (Kaur and Venegas-Gomez 2022) or assessing the talent needs of the quantum industry (Hughes et al 2021). In this regard, a discussion among the community on who needs to be educated in QT, on which topics, to what extent, and for which purpose can also be thought of in its correspondence to the democratization of quantum computing, as introduced above. It is closely related to the distinctions between direct and indirect stakeholders (see section 2), and whether democratization requires access by only direct or both types of stakeholders, and to the question of whether democratizing access to quantum hardware necessarily entails a reduction of the entry barrier to obtain the required skills to utilize that access or not.

The topic of access to quantum hardware is an analogue of the comparison provided in table 2 between front end and back end for education. Realization of quantum computers that are commercially active contains the risk of deepening the existing societal divides and inequalities (de Wolf 2017, Ten Holter et al 2021). A back end motive would be to have distributed expertise and a widespread understanding to distribute the benefits generated by these devices to the widest possible reach, however, this does not directly translate to front end since different identifications of direct stakeholder ship would yield distinctly different actions to be adopted.

Similarly, the trend of leading companies rushing to put their devices freely available on the cloud in an attempt to democratize access can be better understood through them taking democracy as an instrumental value. As listed on table 3, creating a user base helps with reducing hesitancy towards the technology, supports education efforts for workforce development, and aims at increased adoption of the technology to support the ecosystem and market formation efforts. In this regard, companies that manage to reach out to most early users might get strong first mover advantages as the ecosystem and market formation are path-dependent processes. On the other hand, there are many public and grassroots initiatives that are enabled by the actions of these companies. These initiatives aim at raising awareness, inclusion of the widest possible majority, empowering stakeholders, distributing expertise among the public, and much more. Their aims align with taking democracy as an intrinsic value, supporting democracy for the sake of democracy. In the case of companies, their motives are understandably aligned with commercial interests, nonetheless enabling adoption of actions by other actors to further democratize the field.

In the literature, access is not always necessarily associated with the term democratization, and we can clearly see this from the previous literature that advocates for making this technology accessible in one way or another (de Wolf 2017, Johnson 2019, Coates et al 2022, Coenen et al 2022). As an example, in the Insight Report on Quantum Computing Governance Principles of the World Economic Forum, the stakeholders are listed as governments, academics and universities, international organizations, corporations, private entities that are developing and using the technology, developers, and consumers (Coates et al 2022, pp 7–8). In this report, the public is located as an entity that needs to be educated (p 5) and enlightened (p 7), and the deliberations are to be held among stakeholders (p 8; p 19). The report makes no references to democracy or democratization, but in the taxonomy provided above, one might argue that it is implicitly advocating a model similar to the deliberative theory of democracy that limits deliberation to direct stakeholders.

A different argument in the literature without explicitly invoking the terms democracy or democratization is found via the term 'public good' (Roberson et al 2021). In this literature, authors argue for QT to benefit the societies they will be used in, and maintain that the notion of 'public good' should be extended beyond its traditional conceptualization by economists who describe public goods as those which can be used by many without reducing the availability of said goods. They argue for it to be determined through processes of reasoning and engagement between science and society (p 3). This requires wider public consultation and engagement if QT should work for a broader societal good. They highlight that current national strategies are formulated in a narrow sense of public good based on themes of increasing national competitiveness and concerns over threats to national security (p 5), which can be considered as a premature 'imaginary lock-in' (Mikami 2015) to certain visions by a group of experts focused on realizing a narrow set of futures at the expense of alternative potentialities. This argument can be extended to the limits of social shaping of QT, where a lack of public clarity regarding concrete expectations for QT prevents specific engagement around societal impact (Roberson 2021a, p 394). Premature lock-in to certain visions via national narratives limit wider public consultation and engagement, hence limiting the impact of social forces on shaping the trajectory of QT. Finally, it is discussed that for a responsible development of QT, increasing public awareness is the absolute minimum that needs to happen (Coenen and Grunwald 2017, Roberson 2021b). These points in the literature signal that there needs to be further discussion on public engagement and democratization of QT, even if in the end society just endorses the prematurely locked-in visions by national strategies. This approach is more in alignment with participatory democracy in the taxonomy given in section 2, where the whole of society (whether they are direct or indirect stakeholders) should be included in the process of guiding the development trajectory of QT.

A third overall tendency that can be observed in the quantum community and previously mentioned in the literature is through community membership, advocacy, and 'the maker movement' (de Wolf 2017, p 275), which can be associated with the representative theory of democracy, but one that is enriched by deliberative and participatory approaches. This is mainly enabled by public investment programs (like the Quantum Community Network (QCN) under the EU Quantum Flagship ⁷ and the Quantum Future Academy ⁸ ), companies that are developing quantum hardware and software resources (spearheaded by IBM with the Qiskit Advocate initiative ⁹ ), by the formation of online global grassroots communities ¹⁰ (such as QWorld, OneQuantum, Full-Stack Quantum Computation, and so on) that lowers the entry barriers to the field of quantum computing, and by communities focusing on special interest groups ¹¹ (such as Q-munity for high school students, Girls in Quantum for girls and students, Women in Quantum Development (WIQD) for female professionals in QT, Q-Turn (Sainz 2022) for researchers from marginalized groups, and so on). These efforts do not mainly discriminate between direct or indirect stakeholders and promote the widest possible representation in the QT space. QCN has leading researchers representing their countries, Quantum Future Academy hosts two students from each countries selected by national scientific institutions, Qiskit Advocates act as mentors and liaisons between enthusiasts and IBM's resources, grassroot communities such as QWorld and OneQuantum have local branches in more than 25 countries with de facto national representatives of the local quantum grassroots communities, and communities such as WIQD and Q-Turn aim to give voice to researchers representing certain interest groups. All these efforts can be viewed in alignment with a representative theory of democracy after the deliberative and participatory turns, where different stakeholders and populations contribute and become a part of how the second quantum revolution unfolds via certain representatives acting as intermediaries.

As listed above, approaches in line with one or more of the three theories of democracies can be seen in both the literature and the practice of quantum computing, with a particular focus on awareness raising and education due to the phenomenon of workforce or talent shortage. In the next subsection, we will focus on narratives and actions against democratization in quantum computing and QT more generally.

In the current QT ecosystem, we observe three major obstacles for opening up QT to a wider public engagement process that also incorporates a diverse set of perspectives from different groups of stakeholders. These are the narratives of, (a) QT as an arena for geopolitics, (b) quantum mechanics as incomprehensible, and (c) quantum computing as a threat to the cyber-infrastructure. In this subsection, we first describe and analyze these narratives and related actions. As a next step, we will discuss the counter-narratives and actions against these obstacles.

3.2.1. QT as an arena for geopolitics

3.2.2. Quantum mechanics as incomprehensible

3.2.3. Quantum computing as a threat

There are narratives and actions in the QT community that counter the three narratives described in the previous subsection. First, regarding the narrative representing QT as an arena for geopolitics, a militarized technology is almost by definition not a democratized one. Under any of the three democracy theories, excluding the majority of the public and enabling a selected group access to the operational capabilities of a certain set of technologies, cannot be argued for without some serious supporting situational conditions. Having said that, a democratic technology can still be utilized for military and defense purposes; even though it might be less effective in 'keeping the fight unfair' (McKay 2022). Furthermore, discussions on how to balance the risks and responsibilities of stakeholders in this domain can be found in the literature (Roberson 2021b).

For an inclusive process, it should be acknowledged that the world consists not only of hegemonic powers, and QT has the potential for much more than just being another arena for technological competition between them. Civilian uses of QT should be emphasized and how they can be utilized in a way that benefits the common good (Coates et al 2022, p 9), such as via the Sustainable Development Goals (Coates et al 2022, p 16). Civilian uses should be given primacy over creating benefits to operational capabilities of certain military branches. Furthermore, the most coherent response to the misuses of these technologies can be better formulated with international agreements and other forms of stakeholder action (Silbert 2022), rather than with siloed approaches in different global camps. Finally, there are already calls in the literature that 'a responsible innovation mindset requires us to think in potentially more creative ways about national approaches, ownership of such technologies and protectionist or nationalistic approaches' (Ten Holter et al 2022).

Second, regarding the narrative on quantum mechanics being incomprehensible, counter-narratives and actions exist too. As noted earlier in this section, IBM alone spent more than 100 M USD on quantum education efforts in the last five years. There is a committed section of the Quantum Flagship focused on QT education ¹² , research institutes reach out to the public at large to make QT understandable ¹³ , and there are many companies and communities focused on education efforts in QT. There are many innovative approaches such as utilizing games and interactive tools/textbooks (Wootton et al 2021, Seskir et al 2022b), considering quantum mechanics as a generalized probability theory (Aaronson 2013) and organizing community-based workshops (Salehi et al 2022). All these efforts rely on the assumption that one does not need to be a seasoned physicist to understand quantum mechanics on a level to be operationalized for the purposes of utilizing QT.

The foundations of quantum mechanics are full of surprising and sometimes confounding ideas and discoveries. This does not mean, however, that quantum mechanics is incomprehensible, and it surely does not support the Feynmanian position that 'nobody understands quantum mechanics.' For a technology to operate and be adopted by the public, it needs to be understandable, it needs to be 'normal' in a Kuhnian sense. Although one might find Feynman's quote interesting or even funny and aims to use it to instill some sense of wonder and mystery, it is working against the basic assumption that motivates all the outreach and education efforts. It raises the entry barrier to newcomers, it might encourage some that are particularly tuned to challenging this quote, but this will only be a small minority of the public. For an inclusive public engagement process, this narrative should go, and a new one that portrays QT as more normal and mundane be developed: one that is open to participation from all parts of society, one that can be understood through getting involved, and one that is based on science, not mysticism. Interpretations of quantum mechanics can play a role in making QT comprehensible (Vermaas 2017) as they are descriptions of what the world would be like if quantum mechanics is true. In fact, one could even argue that the descriptions of atoms and qubits that are to be used by engineers working in QT for making these technologies more comprehensible can help favor a specific engineering interpretation of quantum mechanics (Vermaas 2005).

Finally, regarding quantum computing as a threat narrative, in 2016 NIST announced that it will be collecting nominations for public-key post-quantum cryptographic algorithms. For over the last five years, a period of open testing has been going for over more than 80 algorithms that were initially submitted. Currently, in Round 3, there are seven main and eight alternate candidates. Even though the process is not finalized yet, some cyber infrastructures already started adopting post-quantum algorithms (such as OpenSSH 9.0 adopting NTRU Prime algorithm ¹⁴ ). This does not mean that the post-quantum algorithms are entirely secure, it is an active research area and recent research reveals some vulnerabilities in some algorithms that are considered as finalists by the NIST (Karabulut and Aysu 2021), requiring the algorithms to be updated. Similarly, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is working on migration strategies and recommendations for quantum-safe schemes (ETSI 2020). All in all, it can be safely said that the issue of 'quantum computing as a threat' is being taken seriously, and several institutions around the globe are working on providing solutions, guidelines, and strategies to prevent negative scenarios.

To sum up: We have identified three narratives as major obstacles inhibiting an inclusive democratization process on QT and provided some possible ways to remove these obstacles and alternative narratives to replace the current ones (see table 4). Education efforts to make quantum mechanics and QT understandable to all may be taken as democratization under all three theories of democracy; the other mentioned counter-narratives and efforts may be directed to and enable only a limited group of stakeholders, fitting more deliberative democracy. The reasons these narratives are widely adopted in the community are more complex than the explanations that we provided. Of course, the alternative narratives we offered are not the only possible ones, and we do not argue that they are necessarily the best alternatives either, but they can act as starting points for more constructive discussions.

In the following section, we expand the discussion to explore the nuances of democratization regarding different QT, how public participation already is and further can be included in this process of democratization.

In section 3 we pointed out that enabling access to quantum computing hardware is associated with democratization. Several authors have argued that such open access is essential for quantum computing (de Wolf 2017, Kop 2021, Ten Holter et al 2021, Coates et al 2022, Coenen et al 2022). For the particular case of quantum computers this makes sense—however, QT is more than quantum computing.

For quantum computing one could argue that giving general access is practically and economically feasible since it can be organized by existing cloud infrastructure. For the other QT providing access may prove to be much more difficult. Consider, for instance, democratizing access to quantum key distribution (QKD) devices. Current costs of QKD devices are around 100 k€ for reasonable systems that can handle modest key rates (KEEQuant 2021, p 8). Even assuming a hundred-fold reduction in cost, providing access to QKD for all the households in the EU would cost approximately 200B€. One might argue that democratization in this case means giving access to QKD devices by avoiding legislation that would limit public use of QKD. But arguing for widespread distribution of this technology for democratization leads nowhere due to the simple reason that the required funds do not exist and will not exist for the foreseeable future.

A different discussion can be made for quantum sensors. Access to classical sensors (such as gyroscopes, cameras, ranging devices) are common, each smartphone contains a considerable number of sensing tools. This does not mean that users are well-educated on how sensors work, most are even unaware that they have these devices in their smartphones. It was noted in a public dialogue report published by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK (2018) that participants were '..confused, disengaged or neutral and communicated finding the topic difficult to understand' (p 8) when the inner workings of gravity sensors were presented to them, but they responded more positively after learning that such devices can be used for climate monitoring (p 26). This again brings forward the question of what exactly should be democratized when such complex and layered technologies are in question: access to the underlying mechanics or the products utilizing those low-level physical properties for operations that are more recognizable by societal actors and stakeholders. Deliberative processes with stakeholders and citizens more broadly on applications of QT thus may be particularly effective democratization measures.

Another interesting aspect is the democratization of research tools and results within the QT community. To quote one example concerning research on qubits, the basic key components in quantum computers:

There are other ways to democratize spin qubits. One can distribute known good devices to academic groups interested in exploring new qubit encodings and ways to control them; this is the foundry model. Increasing throughput of testing at multiple temperature stages (room temperature, 1 to 4 K depending on the physics, and <100 mK) also directly benefits fabricated device optimization. (Tahan 2021, p 3)

Although it is not framed in this manner in the given example, this is a particularly valid and valuable discussion as the high costs of devices limit the participation of researchers from the Global South. Increasing the number of facilities globally has practical benefits for research and development purposes as well. It enables access to local talent, it gives access to some national funding as included countries are most likely to divert funds into the topic, and it promotes the research topic in further regions. Regardless of accepting democracy as an instrumental or intrinsic value, distribution of research among international academic groups, and bringing developing nations onboard has some merit that needs to be taken seriously.

To sum up, whether access is necessary or sufficient for democratization of QT does not have a straightforward answer. If we accept the participatory depiction of democracy, by not having access, a huge portion of society loses even the chance of self-selected participation. On the other hand, in a representative understanding of democracy, the sections that do not have direct access to these technologies can influence the development trajectory of them via representative means, for example, by supporting particular funding schemes. Furthermore, public participation and dialogue exercises, such as the one that was run by EPSRC (2018), are a great example of how a deliberative approach can be taken even when the public does not have direct access to these technologies. This approach may be particularly relevant when it comes to an inclusive democratic approach concerning potential applications of QT.

Opportunities for public participation in the second quantum revolution is another important avenue for discussion on democratization of QT. The obvious avenue of participation for citizens is as consumers, but even that is not very straightforward, as hinted at when discussing public access to QKD. The near-term QT market is expected to be mainly B2B (business-to-business), meaning that the public will not even be participating as consumers. This means that by the time these technologies are in the market for the individual consumers, there might be little room for them to have any say on the development trajectory due to all the path-dependencies infused into their design.

There are some options explored in the QT community to circumvent this outcome. The first one is forming lobbying groups that represent the public's interests (EPSRC 2018, p 43). The second is through participation in research activities via citizen science initiatives. Some examples of this can already be found in the literature (Lieberoth et al 2014, Heck et al 2018, Jensen et al 2021). The third is participating and forming grassroots communities (such as QWorld, OneQuantum, Full-Stack Quantum Computation, Q-munity, and so on), and more specialized communities representing specific groups such as women ¹⁵ (WIQD, Women in Quantum, Womanium Quantum, etc.), researchers that are under-appreciated due to belonging disadvantaged communities ¹⁶ (Q-Turn), students from certain regions ¹⁷ (such as PushQuantum from Munich), quantum software engineers working on open source software ¹⁸ (Quantum Open Source Foundation, Unitary Fund, etc.), researchers working on combining quantum and climate sciences ¹⁹ (Q4Climate), and many others. Fourth is the companies forming such communities for outreach and education efforts (like the Qiskit Advocate program). Finally, there is a developing culture of publishing 'manifestos' in the European QT community.

One of the first and arguably the most influential manifesto in the community was published in 2016 (de Touzalin et al). Both the manifesto and the list of 3680 endorsers are publicly accessible ²⁰ :

On invitation of Mr. Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society and Mr. Henk Kamp, Minister of Economic Affairs in The Netherlands, a European team has been working on a "Quantum Manifesto" to formulate a common strategy for Europe to stay at the front of the second Quantum Revolution. The Manifesto will be officially released on 17–18 May 2016 at the Quantum Europe Conference that The Netherlands is organizing in Amsterdam in cooperation with the European Commission and the QuTech center in Delft.

This was followed by several other manifestos open for endorsement such as the Quantum Software Manifesto (Ambainis et al 2018), The Talavera Manifesto for Quantum Software Engineering and Programming (Piattini et al 2020), and the Quantum Energy Initiative (Auffèves 2022) with varying numbers of signatories, usually around a few hundreds, and by a manifesto that did not look for endorsement and focused on ethical and societal issues (Coenen et al 2022).

The different modes of participation also differ in their correspondence in how they relate to democratic representation. Grassroot communities and lobbying groups enable enthusiasts and the members as stakeholders to either elect de facto representatives of their interests within the given domain of public debate or create participatory spaces where the democratic process takes place on a smaller scale. The route of publishing manifestos calls for deliberation on several aspects. For example, the formation of the Quantum Energy Initiative (Auffèves 2022) raises questions on whether energy efficiency should be endorsed as a core design value for developing QT, and if so, what does this entail? Furthermore, there are proposals for sets of 'core values' of QT such as accountability, inclusiveness, equitability, non-maleficence, accessibility, and transparency (Coates et al 2022, p 9) or comprehensible, specific, open, accessible, responsible, culturally embedded, and meaningful QT (Coenen et al 2022, p 5) that are vocalized via these manifestos and similar publications. In summary, it is a practice emerged in (mainly) the European QT community that is directly in alignment with the process of democratization as it opens QT to democratic deliberation and propose core values that also underpin democracy.

As a first step towards furthering democratic participation, there must be an initial recognition that the public consists not merely of uneducated and unenlightened people but is a collection of different stakeholder groups with (sometimes) divergent interests (Stilgoe et al 2006). This makes public participation and engagement complicated but it is still necessary. Providing access to information, education, and actual hardware in some particular cases are good practices, but public participation in the democratic sense requires adoption of a 'strong' RRI approach which entails linking parliamentary or other core policy processes (Coenen and Grunwald 2017, p 277) to stakeholder dialogues, decision-supporting public engagement and a wide variety of other public communication activities. While this follows a deliberative democracy approach, it is beneficial regardless of the theory of democracy one adopts, given that democracy is taken as an intrinsic value and not utilized for instrumental purposes. Furthermore, other practical steps can also be taken such as supporting the co-creation, with stakeholder groups, of use cases that benefit societal goals, democratization of not only the technologies but visions as well through co-development of cultural artefacts (such as games, artworks, tv shows), opening up controversial topics to discussion—for example, the militarization of QT (McKay 2022) or the 'supremacy' debacle (Preskill 2019)—and so on.

It should be noted that democratization of QT does not necessarily enable the same tools and approaches that work for quantum computing. QT contains a wide range of technologies that are put under the umbrella of QT due to which physical phenomena they utilize. In this sense, we argue that distancing the topic of democratization from particular technological capabilities (such as cloud access) to more overarching points of discussion (such as stakeholder engagement) would benefit the community and societies further.