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
Trusting Scientists
A tweet that made me think. If you think you don't trust scientists, you're mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step onJuly...
From Computational Complexity
Recognizing Faces
I sometimes have trouble recognizing faces, matching faces to people I've interacted with in the past. It's not a disease like prosopagnosia, I can certainly tell...
From Computational Complexity
Pole Vault Live Blogging
As I write this I'm watching the women's pole vault final in the Olympics. Of the 15 women who made the finals, only four remain after two heights.To expand ontweet...
From Computational Complexity
Covid Stats
A stat often quoted: About 97% of hospitalized coronavirus patients have not been vaccinated. People take this as proof that once vaccinated no worries. But I...
From Computational Complexity
Technical Difficulties
After returning from vacation last weekend (hello North Dakota--my 49th state visited), all sorts of odd problems arose. This blog stopped working, a P v NP paper...
From Computational Complexity
Intersecting Classes
If you have two complexity classes that have complete sets, the intersection might not, for example NP ∩ co-NP. The world of total-function classes acts differently...
From Computational Complexity
Collusion Rings
Grigory Yaroslavtsev now maintains the Theory Jobs Spreadsheet, a crowd-sourced listing of where your favorite CS theorists have taken new positions. Read his blog...
From Computational Complexity
The Future of Faculty Hiring
Faculty hiring in computer science is a process long due for an overhaul. The pandemic certainly changed some of the dynamics moving most of the interviews online...
From Computational Complexity
What happened to self-driving cars?
In 2014, I wrote a blog post about a fake company Elfdrive. With a near record-setting investment announced last week, the self-driving car service Elfdrive is...
From Computational Complexity
Does the university matter?
As we come out of a pandemic with online teaching and research collaborations, how much do we actually need the university?Theoretical research in computer science...
From Computational Complexity
Emerging from the Pandemic
The City of Chicago yesterday agreed with the latest CDC guidelines that those of us fully vaccinated no longer have to wear masks in most settings. Lollapalooza...
From Computational Complexity
Cryptocurrency, Blockchains and NFTs
I first wrote about bitcoin in this blog ten years ago after I gave a lecture in a cryptography class I taught at Northwestern. Two years later I had a follow-up...
From Computational Complexity
Negotiations
So you got an offer to be an assistant professor in the computer science department at Prestigious U. Congratulations! Time to negotiate your offer with the chair...
From Computational Complexity
The Million Dollar Sermon
Illinois Tech has one of the greatest origin stories for a university. In 1890 Frank Gunsaulus, a pastor on the south side of Chicago, gave a sermon where he said...
From Computational Complexity
Ordering Beauty
First, congratulations to fellow complexity theorist and blogger Scott Aaronson for receiving the 2020 ACM Prize in Computing for "groundbreaking contributionsMaradona...
From Computational Complexity
Quantum Stories
Scott Aaronson wrote last month about the hype over quantum computing. I'd thought I'd drop a few stories.I was once asked to review a grant proposal (outside the...
From Computational Complexity
Want to Buy a Theorem?
This is embarrassing to admit but after a few badly timed trades on GameStop options I find myself a bit tight on money. To raise some cash, I reluctantly decided...
From Computational Complexity
Slicing the Hypercube
Here's a neat result I heard about at virtual Dagstuhl last week, a new lower bound on the number of hyperplanes that cuts all the edges of a hypercube.A n-dimensional...
From Computational Complexity
I read the news today oh boy
I'm absolutely elated that Lázló Lovász and Avi Wigderson won the Abel Prize. More from the New York Times, Quanta Magazine and Gil Kalai. Another example ofspa...
From Computational Complexity