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Clever Machines Learn How to Be Curious

September 19, 2017

Computer scientists are finding ways to code curiosity into intelligent machines.

Subhash Khot, Playing Unique Games in Washington Square Park

July 10, 2017

The theoretical computer scientist behind the influential Unique Games Conjecture delights in the wonders of New York’s Washington Square Park, where he ponders the impossible.

Q&A

How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation

July 6, 2017

The evolutionary biologist Jessica Flack seeks the computational rules that groups of organisms use to solve problems.

Q&A

Wanted: More Data, the Dirtier the Better

June 6, 2017

The computational immunologist Purvesh Khatri embraces messy data as a way to capture the messiness of disease. As a result, he’s making elusive genomic discoveries.

Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography

May 15, 2017

A new paper claims that a common digital security system could be tweaked to withstand attacks even from a powerful quantum computer.

How to Use a Sphere to Talk to Mars

April 12, 2017

To avoid garbled messages, mathematicians might translate them into geometric form.

Graph Isomorphism Vanquished — Again

January 14, 2017

Just five days after posting a retraction, László Babai announced that he had fixed the error in his landmark graph isomorphism algorithm.

Complexity Theory Problem Strikes Back

January 5, 2017

The legendary graph isomorphism problem may be harder than a 2015 result seemed to suggest.

Q&A

How to Force Our Machines to Play Fair

November 23, 2016

The computer scientist Cynthia Dwork takes abstract concepts like privacy and fairness and adapts them into machine code for the algorithmic age.

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