  We consider an operational restatement of the holographic principle, which we
call the principle of asymptotic quantum tasks. Asymptotic quantum tasks are
quantum information processing tasks with inputs given and outputs required on
points at the boundary of a spacetime. The principle of asymptotic quantum
tasks states that tasks which are possible using the bulk dynamics should
coincide with tasks that are possible using the boundary. We extract
consequences of this principle for holography in the context of asymptotically
AdS spacetimes. We argue for a novel connection between bulk causal structure
and the phase transition in the boundary mutual information. Further, we note a
connection between holography and quantum cryptography, where the problem of
completing asymptotic quantum tasks has been studied earlier. We study the
cryptographic and AdS/CFT approaches to completing asymptotic quantum tasks and
consider the efficiency with which they replace bulk classical geometry with
boundary entanglement.
