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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Computational Complexity
Can you feel the machine?
In the recent academy award winning movie Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr tests a young Oppenheimer. Bohr: Algebra's like sheet music, the important thing isn't canOppenheimer...
From Computational Complexity
Translation in Context
La Scala in Milan Google translate generally impresses but consider this translation from a short Italian news article. I boldfaced a few items. Not scheduled...
From Computational Complexity
Favorite Theorems: Sensitivity
Our next favorite theorem gave a relatively simple proof of the sensitivity conjecture, a long-standing problem of Boolean functions.Induced subgraphs of hypercubes...
From Computational Complexity
A Quantum State
Illinois' most famous citizen working on a quantum computer The governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, unveiled his budget last week including $500 million for quantum...
From Computational Complexity
Sumchecks and Snarks
Last summer as I lamented that my research didn't have real world implications, one of the comments mentioned the sumcheck protocol used for zero-knowledge SNARKs...
From Computational Complexity
Focusing on the Outcomes
An academic field often organizes itself pulling ideas from its own field. For example, students on the economics faculty job search can signal at most two schools...
From Computational Complexity
Favorite Theorems: Graph Isomorphism
We start our favorite theorems of the last decade with a blockbuster improvement in a long-standing problem. Graph Isomorphism in Quasipolynomial Time by László...
From Computational Complexity
University Challenges
Seems like US universities have been in the news quite a bit recently. You'd think for the great academics and research. Alas, no.I decided to make a list of the...
From Computational Complexity
Learning Complexity on Your Own
The following request came from a comment earlier this month (shortened) Could you give some advice on how to study complexity theory on one's own, and/or to follow...
From Computational Complexity
Offer Timing
In most academic fields, departments, either formally or informally, have their interviews and make their junior faculty offers at about the same time. Facultytackled...
From Computational Complexity
Favorite Theorems 2015-2024
In 1994, the FST&TCS conference invited me to give a talk at their meeting in Madras (now Chennai). I was in my tenth year as a complexity theorists since I started...
From Computational Complexity
2023 Complexity Year in Review
Result of the year goes to Polynomial-Time Pseudodeterministic Construction of PrimesLijie Chen, Zhenjian Lu, Igor C. Oliveira, Hanlin Ren and Rahul SanthanamAn...
From Computational Complexity
Respect
I've generally avoided talking about all the events at college campuses in the last few months that came to a head at the congressional hearings last week that...
From Computational Complexity
Do We Need to Formalize?
Back in the 1990s I explored the system Nuprl for formalizing mathematical proofs. We had a theoretical paper on quickly checking a proof and I wanted to see if...
From Computational Complexity
The Engineer and The Computer Scientist
What is the difference between engineering and computer science? CS is not an engineering field, though there is some overlap. It's not the digital versus physical...
From Computational Complexity
War Games
With the self-destruction of OpenAI well underway, Friday night I watched the movie War Games for the first time since the 80s. Quick synopsis (spoilers): NORAD...
From Computational Complexity
Inverting a Function
With the STOC deadline this last Monday, a number of complexity papers have appeared on arXiV and ECCC. Two caught my eye because they seem to independently prove...
From Computational Complexity
Othello. Solved.
The perfect game Back in the 1980s, a high school friend and I created Excalibur, a computer othello program that I've posted about before. Even on an OG IBMannounced...
From Computational Complexity
The Loop Graph
Locals refer to downtown Chicago as "The Loop" because of a rectangle of elevated (or "El") train tracks that create a loop through the area first built in An...
From Computational Complexity