All Watched Over

I’ve recently been rereading Steven Levy’s “Hackers” with my daughter. Levy describes how Brautigan’s 1967 poem “All watched over by machines of loving grace”  was inspiring to the California  “Hardware Hackers” of the 1970s and organizations such as Community Memory.  In 2026, the phrase “all watched over by machines of loving grace” conjures an image … Continue reading All Watched Over

Call for workshop proposals: FOCS 2026

[Guest post by Sam Hopkins] We invite groups of interested researchers to submit workshop proposals for FOCS 2026 by July 31, 2026. The FOCS 2026 workshops provide an informal forum for researchers to discuss important research questions, directions, and challenges in the field. Workshops often serve the vital purpose of introducing researchers to new areas … Continue reading Call for workshop proposals: FOCS 2026

Thoughts by a non-economist on AI and economics

Crossposted on lesswrong Modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago. For the next 99,800 years or so, nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing. There were wars, political intrigue, the invention of agriculture -- but none of that stuff had much effect on the quality of people's lives. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent … Continue reading Thoughts by a non-economist on AI and economics

Machines of Faithful Obedience

[Crossposted on LessWrong] Throughout history, technological and scientific advances have had both good and ill effects, but their overall impact has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to scientific progress, most people on earth live longer, healthier, and better than they did centuries or even decades ago.  I believe that AI (including AGI and ASI) can do … Continue reading Machines of Faithful Obedience

Trevisan prize (guest post by Alon Rosen)

The Trevisan Prize for outstanding work in the Theory of Computing is sponsored by the Department of Computing Sciences at Bocconi University and the Italian Academy of Sciences. The prize is named in honor of Luca Trevisan in recognition of his major contributions to the Theory of Computing. It aims to recognize outstanding work in the field, and to broaden the reach … Continue reading Trevisan prize (guest post by Alon Rosen)

Call for papers Information-Theoretic Crpytography

The sixth Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC) conference will be held at UC Santa Barbara, California, on August 16-17, 2025. The conference is affiliated with CRYPTO 2025, and will take place in the same location just before CRYPTO. Information-theoretic cryptography deals with the design and implementation of cryptographic protocols and primitives with unconditional security guarantees and the usage … Continue reading Call for papers Information-Theoretic Crpytography