Communications of the ACM
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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 Daniel Lemire's Blog
XML for databases: a dead idea
One of my colleagues is teaching an artificial intelligence class. In his class, he uses old videos where experts from the early eighties make predictions about...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How I learned mathematics (as a kid)
As I reported elsewhere, I technically failed kindergarten. For example, one of the test we had to pass was the memorization of our home phone number. I refused...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Government regulations… as software
Socialists accuse me of being a libertarian. Libertarians accuse me of being a socialist. I am actually a pragmatist: I believe that we should set things up to...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Governments are full of bugs
The famous scifi author (and self-described libertarian) David Brin tells a fascinating tale about how he contributed to getting the lead out of gazoline. He explains...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Experience is everything
We learned recently that one of the leading opponents to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Mark Lynas, decided that he had it all wrong. GMOs save the Earth...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are CAPTCHAs a good idea?
A CAPTCHA is a small test used to distinguish human users from robots. They are popular as an anti-spam tool. Until a few months ago, I had an annoying CAPTCHA...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Reflecting on 2012
The new year (2013) is here. So, it is time to reflect on what I have done and seen in 2012. As a researcher, one of the most interesting innovation in 2012 has...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Why do students pay for the research professors do?
Universities require their professors to publish research papers. Yet publishing your research has little to do with most of the teaching that goes on in universities...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
A simple trick to get things done even when you are busy
I have been overwhelmed with busy work for the last couple of weeks. Unavoidably, this has meant shorter emails, fewer follow-ups with collaborators and not as...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Why I like the new C++
I was reading Vivek Haldar’s post on the new C++ (C++11) and I was reminded that I need to write such a post myself. C++ is a standardized language. And they came...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What I do with my time
I am not a very productive person. I also do not work long hours. However, I sometimes give the impression that I productive. I have been asked to explain how I...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The learning pill
Shirky predicts that the bulk of higher education is being disrupted the same way the music industry was disrupted by MP3 files. Should we believe him? Let us run...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast Sets of Integers
Maintaining a set of integers is a common problem in programming. It can also be implemented in many different ways. Maybe the most common implementation uses a...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Should you follow the experts?
It is silly to say that ignorance is strength. However, the contrary statement is not follow the experts. The right knowledge is strength. The tricky part is that...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Is reading memory faster than writing on a PC?
For human beings, reading is much faster than writing. The same is often true for computers: adding a record to a database may take an order of magnitude longer...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
When is a bitmap faster than an integer list?
You can represent a list of distinct integers no larger than N using exactly N bits: if the integer i appears in your list, you set the i th bit to true. Bits for...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
You cannot scale creativity
As a teenager, I was genuinely impressed by communism. The way I saw it, the West could never compete. The USSR offered a centralized and efficient system that...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Will I get a job with this degree?
In Quebec, we have had massive student protests. Students were asking for free higher education. It seems that things have quieted down as the new government has...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How well does peer review work?
Since the second world war, science has relied on what I call traditional peer review. In this form of peer review, researchers send their manuscript to journal...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog