[jebej]

The latter.

More seriously though, there won't be a true error corrected quantum computer for a long time. People are hoping that there can be useful applications with imperfect physical qubits.

[wahern]

At the very least the machines are being used to experimentally verify quantum correction algorithms. See, e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02297 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01866 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00990.pdf