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 Computational Complexity
tl;dr
Every now and then we need new words and phrases come into our lexicon, like the unfortunate "twerking", but here's another "tl;dr", short for "too long; didn't...
From Computational Complexity
Cryptography and the NSA
Back at Northwestern I occasionally taught an undergraduate cryptography class since I was the local expert in the field (a statement not even remotely true atAdvanced...
From Computational Complexity
Myhill Nerode versus Pumping Lemma
I have seen some recent backlash against the pumping lemma for showing that languages are not regular and as I am now teaching regular languages I had to choose...
From Computational Complexity
The Dream
I have this theory that everybody's notion of "recent history" starts not from their memories but from their birth date. Case in point: Billy Joel's We Didn't Start...
From Computational Complexity
P = NP and the Weather
In the Beautiful World, my science fiction chapter of The Golden Ticket where P = NP in a strong way, I predicted that we could predict weather accurately enough...
From Computational Complexity
Flash Gordon
We watched the movie Ted last week but this post isn't about that movie. The movie has several references to the 1980 movie Flash Gordon including an extended cameo...
From Computational Complexity
Don't Have an End Game
As a young professor, I wrote a grant proposal and took it to a senior theory professor for comments. He told me to take out the line "The ultimate goal of computational...
From Computational Complexity
Why is Multiplication Hard?
Quick. What is 879544 * 528045? Unless you used a calculator or was some sort of savant you it would take you a couple of minutes to figure out a solution. Of course...
From Computational Complexity
Ph.D. Attrition
Leonard Cassuto writes in the Chronicle an article Ph.D. Attrition: How Much Is Too Much? He presupposes the answer with the subtitle "A disturbing 50 percent of...
From Computational Complexity
AltaVista versus Google
Today Yahoo is closing AltaVista, the best search engine before Google. The news caught me by surprise, AltaVista still existed? A number of commentators attribute...
From Computational Complexity
Computability in Europe
Bill and I are both in Europe this week. I'm in Milan at Computability in Europe and Bill is 500 miles away in Budapest for the Paul Erdős Centenary. The US 4th...
From Computational Complexity
Friends Don't Let Friends Carpool
The AAA foundation measured cognitive distraction while driving and reported that having a passenger in the car is as dangerous as using a cell phone. On a scale...
From Computational Complexity
Automate Me
An economist friend asked me if there were still productivity gains to be had for office workers (like us). After all, we have email, social networks, skype and...
From Computational Complexity
The Internship
Last weekend I took my teenage daughters to see The Internship, the Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson vehicle where they play two forty-year old interns at Google. It basically...
From Computational Complexity
Complexity Typecast
Lance: Welcome to another exciting typecast coming from sunny Stanford University. I'm with Bill at the 28th Conference on Computational Complexity. Hi Bill, IBill...
From Computational Complexity
STOC is Burning
Bill and I are in Palo Alto this week for the co-located meetings of STOC and Complexity. In a new ACM policy, the STOC 2013 papers are freely downloadable by all...
From Computational Complexity
The High Quality Research Act
Lots of talk, mostly negative, about the proposed High Quality Research Act. Prior to making an award of any contract or grant funding for a scientific research...
From Computational Complexity
Theory Jobs 2013
Time for the annual spring jobs posts. Like last year, I set up a Google Spreadsheet that everyone can edit so we can crowd source who is going where next year....
From Computational Complexity
Quantum Computing Fast and Slow
I just read two very different science books, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Scott Aaronson's Quantum Computing since Democritus. Not much to connect...
From Computational Complexity