This is a photo of my book shelf at the office. Ever since joining Harvard, I have been ordering copies of Quantum Computing Since Democritus on a regular basis. I often hand them out to bright students, curious about science, whom I want to expose to the beautiful connections between computer science, math, physics, and … Continue reading My friend, Scott Aaronson
Author: Boaz Barak
Injecting some numbers into the AGI debate
[Yet another "philosophizing" post, but one with some actual numbers. --Boaz] Recently there have been many debates on “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) and whether or not we are close to achieving it by scaling up our current AI systems. In this post, I’d like to make this debate a bit more quantitative by trying to … Continue reading Injecting some numbers into the AGI debate
Teaching circuits as the first computational model
This fall, I am once again teaching Harvard's "Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science" course (CS 121). Like many "intro to TCS / intro to theory of computation" courses, Harvard's course used to be taught with Sipser's classic textbook. Sipser's book is indeed, for better or worse, a classic. It is extremely well-written and students like … Continue reading Teaching circuits as the first computational model
The uneasy relationship between deep learning and (classical) statistics
An often-expressed sentiment is that deep learning (and machine learning in general) is “simply statistics,” in the sense that it uses different words to describe the same concepts statisticians have been studying for decades. In the 1990s, Rob Tibshirani wrote the following tongue-in-cheek “glossary”:: Something about this table resonates with me. In fact, as anyone … Continue reading The uneasy relationship between deep learning and (classical) statistics
STOCial 2022: Guest post by Clément Canonne (+ TCS Women Spotlight workshop)
[To further prove that I am not a longtermist, here is a guest post by Clément about activities in STOC that will happen next week. --Boaz] UPDATE: Don't miss the TCS Women Spotlight Workshop Monday, June 20th, 8:45 am - 11:450 am Rome Time. Irit Dinur will give a talk on "How I re-proved the PCP … Continue reading STOCial 2022: Guest post by Clément Canonne (+ TCS Women Spotlight workshop)
Why I am not a longtermist
[Apologies for yet another "philosophizing" blog post, hope to get back to posts with more equations soon... Should also mention that one response to this piece was that "anyone who writes a piece called "Why I am not a longtermist" is probably more of a longtermist than 90% of the population" 🙂 --Boaz] “Longtermism” is … Continue reading Why I am not a longtermist
Information Theoretic Cryptography 22: Guest post by Benny Applebaum
Dear friends, The third information-theoretic cryptography conference (ITC) 2022 will be held in-person at MIT this year from July 5-7. We have an exciting program with 17 cool papers and 6 plenary talks by Yuval Ishai, Rafael Pass, David Zuckerman, Omri Ben-Eliezer, Dakshita Khurana and Yevgeniy Dodis on topics that span the breadth of information-theoretic cryptography (and … Continue reading Information Theoretic Cryptography 22: Guest post by Benny Applebaum
Workshop on Local Algorithm 22: Guest post by Clément Canonne
After two years online, the 🔎 Workshop on Local Algorithms (WOLA) is back in person, and will be held in Warsaw from June 25th to June 27th. Come and discuss local algorithms of all kinds — sublinear-time, distributed, streaming, (massively) parallel, as well as graphical models and much more; and exchange ideas, techniques, and insights with others from … Continue reading Workshop on Local Algorithm 22: Guest post by Clément Canonne
HALG ’22 Call for Participation (Guest post by Keren Censor-Hillel)
7th Highlights of Algorithms conference (HALG 2022)The London School of Economics and Political Science, June 1-3, 2022https://www.lse.ac.uk/HALG-2022 The Highlights of Algorithms conference is a forum for presenting the highlights of recent developments in algorithms and for discussing potential further advances in this area. The conference will provide a broad picture of the latest research in algorithms through a … Continue reading HALG ’22 Call for Participation (Guest post by Keren Censor-Hillel)
Philosophy of science and the blockchain: A book review
This blog post is a book review of sorts for the following two books: To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Steven Weinberg (2016) The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens (2020). Both books cover (in different proportions) the history and philosophy of science. By the end of … Continue reading Philosophy of science and the blockchain: A book review
Windows On Theory 