Taylor G. Lunt

(A book review of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science .) In 1952, Alan Turing, the so-called father of computer science, published a paper describing how patterns in nature, such as the stripes and spots of animal pelts, can arise naturally from simple, local rules. These Turing patterns have been shown to occur on windswept sand, seashell surface spirals, the distribution of stars in galaxies...

There is a problem you want to solve. Let's say the problem can be solved in polynomial time. That is, you can solve the problem in a small number of steps. Hooray! That means it's easy to get a computer to solve the problem for you in a step-by-step fashion. But some problems are harder, requiring exponential time to solve. You've heard the phrase "exponential growth". That's what you don't want ...

I recently read the AI 2027 predictions . I think they're way off. I was visualizing my self at Christmastime 2027, sipping egg nog and gloating about how right I was, but then I realized it doesn't count if I don't register my prediction publicly, so here it is. This blog post is mostly about me trying to register my predictions than trying to convince anyone, but I've also included my justificat...