Quantum computing is the use of quantum mechanical physical processes to perform computation in ways unavailable to classical computers.
Further reading
Sevilla, Jaime (2021) Forecasting quantum computing, Effective Altruism Forum, April 10.
External links
Quantum Country. A free introduction to quantum computing and quantum mechanics using spaced repetition, by Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen.
Related entries
AI forecasting | AI governance | AI safety | compute governance
It could make sense to rename and rescope this to “quantum mechanics”, with quantum computing “just” being the most prominent subtopic of that topic in EA. Or it could make sense to make a separate entry intended to cover quantum mechanisms apart from quantum computing.
But currently I’m not aware of many Forum posts to tag for quantum mechanics that aren’t about quantum computing, which is why I tentatively chose the current name and scope.