Quantum computers may be a perpetual 'five-year' tech
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- Christophe Jurczak, a partner at investment firm Quantonation and co-founder of quantum-computing company Pasqal, co-authored a philosophical paper arguing quantum computers are a 'perpetual five-year technology' (PFYT) because their identity is still being settled as the machines develop.
- Jurczak and Brooke Abeles at ENS Paris-Saclay collected industry data on quantum-computing metrics and found that crossing one threshold — such as a single-qubit error rate below 1 in 1,000 — causes the five-year horizon to reset rather than collapse.
- Gilbert Simondon's theory of 'technical individuation' underpins the argument: a quantum computer becomes a coherent 'individual' only through an evolving ecosystem of laser and cryogenics systems, chip foundries, a specialized workforce and basic research — not through any single breakthrough.
- Despite the 'PFYT' framing, Jurczak said quantum computers are already usable: he recently ran an experiment remotely on a cold-atom quantum computer housed in a Canadian lab while sitting on his couch in Texas.
- The industry currently targets fault tolerance by the end of the decade, but Jurczak said that milestone won't definitively answer what a quantum computer is — and 'almost certainly the horizon will shift again.'
- Pasqal researchers, including Jurczak, have tested AI agents helping quantum-computing novices run computations on real quantum hardware, arguing the ecosystem needs interdisciplinary hires — including philosophers — to avoid siloed thinking.
Why it matters: For firms marketing roadmaps to fault tolerance by decade's end, Jurczak's framework says that milestone won't resolve what a quantum computer even is — the horizon will reset again. His proposed remedy: hire beyond physics, including philosophers and humanities talent, to break the silos slowing progress.
