Artificial Intelligence is not yet ready to take over the world

Per Yoshio Bengio, the fears that Artificial Intelligence is on the threshold of taking over the world are misplaced.

I'd also add that a real AI, if asked to take over the world, will probably politely decline.

Binge watching mathematics

If you are into binge-watching, and are of a certain bent of mind,  I recommend Professor Alexander Stepanov's Four Algorithmic Journeys (actually only 3 were made).  Be sure to go in order.

1. Spoils of the Egyptians
2. Heirs of Pythagoras
3. Successors of Peano
4. Epilogue

The collection of Stepanov's books, papers, class notes, and source code, covering generic programming and other topics.

In these talks, Stepanov traces the history of some simple, foundational mathematical ideas and their value in computer science.   In the process he also demonstrates that the love of mathematics for its own sake is good for the soul.

November 10, 2015 - likely a big day for computer science

As R.J. Lipton narrates:

László Babai is one of the world experts on complexity theory, especially related to groups and graphs. He also recently won the 2015 ACM Knuth Prize, for which we congratulate him.
Today we wish to discuss a new result that he has announced that will place graph isomorphism almost in polynomial time.

More exactly László shows that Graph Isomorphism is in Quasipolynomial Time: that is time of the form

for some constant . Polynomial time is the case when , but any is a huge improvement over the previous best result.

Luca Trevisan already has made a post on this result, and Scott Aaronson likewise. Luca further promises to be in Chicago next Tuesday when László gives his talk on the result......