The Blog of Record

On Saturday, I had my last Illinois Tech graduation as dean before I step down at the end of June. The College of Computing had nearly 1600 graduates and I shook many, many hands that morning.

After graduation I caught a plane to Washington, DC to attend the wedding of my daughter's college friend. We were invited because we became good friends with the bride's parents when we lived in Atlanta. My last trip before Covid was to DC for an NSF panel and this was my first trip to Washington since. 

The out-of-town guests were housed at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, coincidentally the same hotel that hosted STOC 2009. My favorite STOC talk of all time took place in that building. But I remembered nothing about the venue except for the jogging path near the hotel.

No trip to the DMV would be complete without seeing my co-blogger Bill Gasarch in person for the first time in years. We chatted about many things, most notably his last few posts where he joked about the new pope's undergraduate math thesis, taken seriously by both our readers and ChatGPT. I reminded Bill that we are the blog of record, often used by wikipedia as a primary source for much in and out of complexity. Later Bill took out the fake thesis titles.

With graduation behind me, not much more for me to do as dean before my term ends. On the plane ride home, I thought about the question everyone asks me: What's next? I have no idea, but it's going to be fun.

Is Satire Dangerous in the AI-Age?

There have been times when satire has been mistaken for reality. A list of Onion stories that were mistaken for reality (or was it a mistake?) is here. When I say mistaken for reality I mean that a large set of people were fooled.

My own Ramsey-History-Hoax (blog here, latest version of the paper here) has fooled some people; however the number of people is small since the number of people who know the underlying math is small. 

In my last blog (see here) I said that the Pope Leo XIV majored in math (that is true) and then I gave a false title for his thesis (I HAVE SINCE REMOVED THE ENTIRE PASSAGE). 

 Later in the post I said that his ugrad thesis was not on that topic, but  gave another false title (I HAVE RMEOVED THAT AS WELL.) 

I thought the reader would know that it was false, but one comment inquired about it so I left a comment admitting it was false.

This is all very minor: Not that many people read this blog and very few non-math people would care about what the topic of the  Pope's undergraduate thesis.

The last part of the last sentence is false. Its the POPE! People Do care about his background. 

But surely my blog post isn't so well read so as to make the fictional  title of his thesis a hoax that fools a lot of people. 

Even so, I left a comment wondering if LLM's might learn the incorrect title of the Pope's ugrad thesis. 

A reader named E posted the following:

 It might be too late. I did this search this evening:

E: Did Pope Leo XIV study Ramsey Theory?

Gemini: Pope Leo XIV, whose given name is Robert Francis Prevost,
earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Villanova
University in 1977. His undergraduate thesis focused on Rado's Theorem
for Nonlinear Equations.

0) This may not be too bad- one would have to ask about The Pope and Ramsey Theory to get that answer. But in the future this answer might pop up on the question`What did the Pope Study as an Undergraduate' or similar questions.

1) Might future satires or April Fool's Day jokes be mistaken for reality in the future by AI and hence reach a much larger audience than this blog does?

2) If so, should we be careful with what we post (not sure how to do that)?

3) What about people who have a much larger following than complexityblog  (yes, there are such people)?

4) In the past one had to be a celebrity or similar to change peoples perception of reality (see Stephen Colbert and Wikipedia here). Now a complexity blogger may be able to change people's perception of reality. Hence I ask

Is Satire Dangerous in the AI-Age?

 

 

 

 

 

A Bittersweet Anniversary

The National Science Foundation was founded on May 10, 1950, 75 years ago last Saturday. No doubt the NSF has seen better days, but first let's take a look back.

At the end of World War II, Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Development, wrote Science, The Endless Frontier, where he laid out the importance of scientific research and the need for the US government to foster that research. 

A new agency should be established, therefore, by the Congress for the purpose. Such an agency, moreover, should be an independent agency devoted to the support of scientific research and advanced scientific education alone. Industry learned many years ago that basic research cannot often be fruitfully conducted as an adjunct to or a subdivision of an operating agency or department. Operating agencies have immediate operating goals and are under constant pressure to produce in a tangible way, for that is the test of their value. None of these conditions is favorable to basic research. Research is the exploration of the unknown and is necessarily speculative. It is inhibited by conventional approaches, traditions, and standards. It cannot be satisfactorily conducted in an atmosphere where it is gauged and tested by operating or production standards. Basic scientific research should not, therefore, be placed under an operating agency whose paramount concern is anything other than research. Research will always suffer when put in competition with operations.

The report laid out the National Research Foundation that would actually spread across three agencies, DARPA, NIH, and the NSF.

While Bush didn't significantly mention computing, given the time, Computing would become a central part of NSF's mission with the establishment of the Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate in 1986, placing Computing at the same level as the Math and Physical Sciences Directorate and the Engineering Directorate.

In 1999, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) issued a report that led to the NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) program, which became one of the largest NSF research initiatives of the early 2000s. The report helped reframe computing not just as infrastructure but as a scientific discipline in its own right, deserving of the same kind of basic science funding as physics or biology.

CISE has led many initiatives through the years, for example the TRIPODS program established several centers devoted to the theoretical study of data science.

In recent weeks, the NSF director stepped down, hundreds of grants were canceled, new grants were put indefinitely on hold, indirect costs on new grants will be capped at 15%, and many staff members were pushed out. Divisions below the directorates are slated for elimination, advisory committees have been disbanded, and Trump's proposed budget cuts NSF’s allocation by about half. The CISE AD (Assistant to the NSF Director, or head of CISE), Greg Hager, stepped down last week and through the CRA sent a message to the community.

Under these circumstances, my ability to carry out my vision, to provide a voice for computing research, and to provide authentic leadership to the community are diminished to the point that I can have more impact outside NSF than within it. Echoing Dr. Nelson’s powerful article, leaving “allows me to speak more clearly in my own language,” and, in doing so, even more effectively amplify the work of the incredible, dedicated CISE leadership and staff who continue to strive to fulfill NSF’s mission. 

As I move beyond NSF, I will continue to make the case for computing research. Computing is central to so much in today’s world and computing advances are now core assets to the Nation’s research enterprise. NSF’s support for the past 75 years has forcefully demonstrated the value of computing research for advancing national health, prosperity and welfare; enhancing national economic competitiveness; securing the national defense and helping promote all of science and engineering. NSF-funded work has continually catalyzed new innovations, created new industries, and made us the envy of the world.  

We all need to join Greg in continuing the fight to ensure that Vannevar Bush's vision continues to survive another 75 years and beyond.

Random Thought on the New Pope (the actual New Pope, not the TV series). He was a math major!

 The New Pope is Pope Leo XIV (pre-Pope name is Robert  Prevost). 

1) Pope names are one of the few places we still use Roman Numerals. I saw an article that was probably satirical that Americans prefer Roman Numerals (the numbers Jesus used) over Arabic Numerals. Also note that Pope Francis did not have a Roman Numeral- that is because he is the first Pope Francis. They could call him Pope Francis I now, rather than later, to avoid having to rewrite things. (John Paul I took the name John Paul I.)

2) Over the years I have  read the following and had the following thoughts (Spoiler- I was wrong on all of them)

a) The last non-Italian Pope was Pope Adrian VI who was Pope from Jan 9 1522 to Sept 14 1523. His Wikipedia entry: here. He was 80 years old when he became Pope and died of  a heart attack.

BILL THOUGHT: We will never see a non-Italian Pope again.

REALITY: John Paul II from Poland was Pope from 1978 until 2005. His Wikipedia page is here

MORE REALITY: Since then we've had Pope Benedict XVI (Germany), Pope Francis I (Argentina),and Pope Leo  XIV (America). I now wonder if we will ever have an Italian Pope again but I make no predictions. 

b) There will never be an American Pope because people think that America already has too much power and if there ever was an American Pope then people would think it was engineered by the CIA.

BILL THOUGHT: That sounded correct to me. Not that the election would be engineered by the CIA, but that people would think that. 

REALITY: Pope Leo XIV is American. Some MAGA people are calling Pope Leo a Woke Marxist Pope (see here). Not the type the CIA would install. 

QUESTION: How much power does the Pope really have? I ask non-rhetorically as always. 

c) The shortest Pope Reign was Pope Urban VII (1590) who reigned for 13 days. The tenth shortest was Pope Benedict V (964) who reigned for 33 days. I originally thought the short reigns were from assassinations, but I looked it up and there were two that may have been murdered, but the rest died of natural causes. Having looked it up I wrote it up here.

BILL THOUGHT: The 10th shortest reign was 33 days. With better health care and less skullduggery in the Papacy that won't happen again.

REALITY: Pope John-Paul I in 1978 died of a heart attack after being Pope for 33 days. 

d) The last Pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII in 1415 (his Wikipedia page is here). He resigned to heal a  schism in the church (its more complicated than that, see his Wikipedia page).

BILL THOUGHT: We will never see a Pope resign again.

REALITY: Pope Benedict XVI resigned (see here for the Wikipedia page on the resignation) in 2013. He said it was for health reasons.

BILL THOUGHT: Now that Pope Benedict has resigned it will be easier for later popes who feel they are not healthy enough for the job to resign. But I make no predictions. 

3) Pope Leo XIV has a degree in Mathematics. I emailed the following to my Ramsey Theory class which is an excerpt from his Wikipedia Page with one incorrect sentence.  (NOTE- I USED TO HAVE A TITLE OF THE POPE'S UGRAD MATH THESIS, WHICH WAS FAKE, BUT SINCE AI'S PICKED IT UP AS REAL I HAVE DELETED THAT, AND ALSO DELETED A LATER PART OF THIS POST WHERE I  GIVE THE REAL TITLE, WHICH IS ALSO FAKE.)

Prevost earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in mathematics from Villanova University, an Augustinian college, in 1977.  He obtained a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1982, also serving as a physics and math teacher at St. Rita of Cascia High School in Chicago during his studies. He earned a Licentiate of Canon Law in 1984, followed by a Doctor of Canon Law degree in 1987 from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. His doctoral thesis was titled The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine. Villanova University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in 2014

4) He is not the first Pope who knew some mathematics. In a general sense people used to be more well-rounded before fields got so specialized. So in that sense I am sure that some prior Popes knew some math. But more concretely Pope Sylvester II was, according to the article When the Pope was a Mathematician Europe's leading mathematician, (at the time a modest distinction) reigning as Pope Sylvester from  997 to1003. His Wikipedia page is here.

5) Since Pope Leo XIV was a mathematician, as Pope he won't only know about sin but also about cos.

6) The name Leo struck me since one of my TAs is named Leo. I asked him, if he became Pope, would he change his name. He said 

Hmm, after careful consideration, I think I would take another name. I like being Leo, but I think I would want to try out a different name. I looked up Papal names, and I would probably pick something cool like Boniface, Honorius, or Valentine. But I would do the name change after the semester ends so as not to screw up the payroll office. 

7) Popes did not always change their names. For a long article on that see here. For a short version here are some points:

a) The first Pope to change his name was born Mercurious, a Pagan God Name, and changed it to be Pope John II. That was in 533. 

b) The name-change did not become standard for a while. Before the year 1000 only 3 Popes changed their names, all to John. The other two had given name Peter and felt they should not take the name Peter since Peter was the first Pope and an apostle. Kind of like having a jersey number retired by a sports team.

c) After the year 1000 some changed,some didn't, but the last one to not change was Pope Marcellus II in 1555. His reign was 22 days, though I doubt that is related to not changing his name. 

8) Math question: What is the average length of a Papacy and what is the average length of a presidency (of America)?

The first Pope was Peter, began in 30AD.

The 266th Pope was Francis whose reign ended in 2025.

SO we have 266 Popes in 1995 years, so the average reign is 7.5 years.

The first president was George Washington whose presidency began in 1789.

The 46th president was Joe Biden and it ended in 2025.

SO we have 46 presidents (we ignore the Grover C thing) in 236 years, so the avg reign is 5.1 years.

The 7.5 and 5.1 are more different than they look since the length of presidents is usually 4 or 8 years,while the length of a Papal reign has had a min  of 13 days and a max of 31 years (Pope Pius IX).

I'l be curious what the standard deviation and deviance are for both Papal Reigns and Presidents. I suspect that it's much bigger for Papal reigns, and not just because the presidency is at most 8 years (with one exception-FDR was president for 12 years). 

9) There was betting and betting markets on the next Pope. This raises the question of how often someone NOT on the short list (so probably not bet on much) becomes Pope. Lets look at the last few:

Pope Leo XIV- not on the short list

Pope Francis- not on the short list

Pope Benedict XVI- a favorite

Pope John Paul II- not on the short list

Pope John Paul I- I don't know and I will stop here.

Upshot: it may be foolish to bet on the next Pope. Even more so than betting on the Vice Prez nominee which I commented on here.

10) Art imitates life: Some of the cardinals at the conclave watched the movie Conclave to get an idea of what a conclave is like. I suspect the real conclave was much less dramatic than the movie Conclave. 

11) Trump thinks that since the Pope is American, America should annex the Vatican. Or does he? See this article here.  

12) Pope Leo has an opinion about AI (I wonder if his math background helps); see here. This is a good example of the limits to the Pope's power-does anyone who can do anything care what Pope Leo XIV thinks? I ask non-rhetorically as always.

Using AI for Reviews

I reviewed a paper recently and I had to agree not to use AI in any aspect of the reviewing process. So I didn't but it felt strange, like I wouldn't be able to use a calculator to check calculations in a paper. Large language models aren't perfect but they've gotten very good and while we shouldn't trust them to find issues in a paper, they are certainly worth listening to. What we shouldn't do is have AI just write the review with little or no human oversight, and the journal wanted me to check the box probably to ensure I wouldn't just do that, though I'm sure some do and check the box anyway.

I've been playing with OpenAI's o3 model and color me impressed especially when it comes to complexity. It solves all my old homework problems and cuts through purported P v NP proofs like butter. I've tried it on some of my favorite open problems where it doesn't make new progress but it doesn't create fake proofs and does a good job giving the state of the art, some of which I didn't even know about beforehand.

We now have AI at the level of new graduate students. We should treat them as such. Sometimes we give grad students papers to review for conferences but we need to look over what they say afterwards, the same way we should treat these new AI systems. Just because o3 can't find a bug doesn't mean there isn't one. The analogy isn't perfect, we give students papers to review so they can learn the state of the art and become better critical thinkers, in addition to getting help in our reviews. 

We do have a privacy issue. Most papers under review are not for public consumption and if uploaded into a large-language model they could become training data and be revealed if someone asks a relevant question. Ideally we should use a system that doesn't train on our inputs if we use AI for reviewing but both the probability of leakage and amount of damage is low, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

If you are an author, have AI review your paper before you submit it. Make sure you ask AI to give you a critical review and make suggestions. Maybe in the future we'd required all submitted papers to be AI-certified. It would make the conference reviewers jobs less onerous.

For now, humans alone or AI alone is just not the best way to do conference reviews. For now when you do a review, working with an AI system as an assistant will lead to a stronger review. I suspect in the future, perhaps not that far, AI alone might do a better job. We're not there yet, but we're further than you'd probably expect.

My response to Scott's least controversal post ever!

In a recent post by Scott (see here or just read my post which includes his post) he listed topis that he conjectured would NOT cause an outrage.

I was going to write a long comment in his comments section,  which would only be read by people who got to comment 100 or so. OR I could comment on it in my blog.

SO, here is his blog post and my comments on it.

------------------------------

A friend and I were discussing whether there’s anything I could possibly say, on this blog, in 2025, that wouldn’t provoke an outraged reaction from my commenters.  So I started jotting down ideas. Let’s see how I did.

1) Pancakes are a delicious breakfast, especially with blueberries and maple syrup.

BILL: Pancakes have a terrible ratio of health to enjoyment.

2) Since it’s now Passover, and no pancakes for me this week, let me add: I think matzoh has been somewhat unfairly maligned. Of course it tastes like cardboard if you eat it plain, but it’s pretty tasty with butter, fruit preserves, tuna salad, egg salad, or chopped liver.

BILL: UNFAIRLY MALIGNED. That's an interesting concept in itself since there are so many opinions on the internet there is not really a consensus on.... anything.  My 2 cents: I like the taste of cardboard and hence I like the taste of matzoh.

3) Central Texas is actually really nice in the springtime, with lush foliage and good weather for being outside.

BILL: I WILL DEFER to Scott, who is now a Texan, on this one.

4) Kittens are cute. So are puppies, although I’d go for kittens given the choice.

BILL: PETS are a waste of time and energy. My opinion shows something more important: Scott and I disagree on this but we are not OUTRAGED at each other.

5) Hamilton is a great musical—so much so that it’s become hard to think about the American Founding except as Lin-Manuel Miranda reimagined it, with rap battles in Washington’s cabinet and so forth. I’m glad I got to take my kids to see it last week, when it was in Austin (I hadn’t seen it since its pre-Broadway previews a decade ago). Two-hundred fifty years on, I hope America remembers its founding promise, and that Hamilton doesn’t turn out to be America’s eulogy.

BILL: Agree. Also lead to the best math novelty song of all time, See here.

6) The Simpsons and Futurama are hilarious.

BILL: The cliche The Simpsons was better in its first X seasons is true, but it can still crank out an excellent episode once in a while. The episode  Treehouse of Horrors: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes  (from 2024--Wikipedia entry here)  is a microcosm of the series: Two okay satires of two okay stories by Ray Bradbury and then a BRILLIANT satire of Fahrenheit 451. (Spell check thinks Treehouse is not a word .I looked it up to see what the geat God Google would say.  The Treehouse of Horror episodes of the Simpsons use Treehouse. I googled Is Treehouse One word and got a YES. This is a rare time when spellcheck is just wrong.)

BILL: I think Futurama benefited from being on the air, then off, then on, then off, then on (is it on now?) since it came back with new stories. 

7) Young Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory are unjustly maligned. They were about as good as any sitcoms can possibly be.

BILL: AGREE though again, some malign, some praise, some just watch it and laugh.  I've had 5 blog posts inspired by these shows, and a few more that mention them in passing. I recently saw TBBT on a list of OVERRATED shows so someone must be liking it to cause it to be on that list.

BILL: In an earlier era it would be hard to watch every episode of a TV show since they were on once, and then maybe some reruns but maybe not.  I've seen every episode of both TBBT and YS without even trying to. 

BILL: (Added later inspired by a comment) For the entire run of the series YS the actress who played Missy, Raegan Revod did not have a Wikipedia page. I noted this in two prior blog posts. I am happy to say that she finally does, see here. It is a long overdue honor. (Is it an honor?) 

8) For the most part, people should be free to live lives of their choosing, as long as they’re not harming others.

BILL: TRICKY- the For the most part causes arguments and outrage. Example: Helmet laws for motorcyclists. Should they be free to get brain injuries that the rest of society must pay for?  I ask non-rhetorically as always.

9) The rapid progress of AI might be the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime. There’s a huge range of plausible outcomes, from “merely another technological transformation like computing or the Internet” to “biggest thing since the appearance of multicellular life,” but in any case, we ought to proceed with caution and with the wider interests of humanity foremost in our minds.

BILL: I doubt it's the biggest thing since the appearance of multicellular life.  My blog on AI here. I agree that caution is needed, though in two ways:

a) Programs are written that we don't understand and might be wrong in serious ways. (You can replace programs with other things.)

b) The shift in the job market may be disruptive. People point to that farmers stopped farming and moved to factory work, but there was an awful transition time. And the AI-shift might be much faster. Fortunately for me, ChatGPT is terrible at solving problems in Ramsey Theory. For now.

10) Research into curing cancer is great and should continue to be supported.

BILL: This one seems obvious but one has to ask the broader question: Which medical things should be funded and why? More generally, what should the government fund and why? These require careful thought. 

11) The discoveries of NP-completeness, public-key encryption, zero-knowledge and probabilistically checkable proofs, and quantum computational speedups were milestones in the history of theoretical computer science, worthy of celebration.

BILL: Of course I agree. But the following questions haunt me:

a) What is a natural problem and do we spend too much time on unnatural ones. Even Graph Isom which seems like a natural problem does not have any applications (see my blog posts here and a ChatGPT  generated post on this topic here).

b) Darling has asked me IF WE PROVE P NE NP THEN HOW WILL THAT HELP SOCIETY? Good question.

12) Katalin Karikó, who pioneered mRNA vaccines, is a heroine of humanity. We should figure out how to create more Katalin Karikós.

BILL: Cloning?

BILL: This raises the general question of how much ONE PERSON is responsible for great scientific discoveries.

13) Scientists spend too much of their time writing grant proposals, and not enough doing actual science. We should experiment with new institutions to fix this.

BILL: Also writing up papers and waiting for referees reports. A paper I submitted with students 3 years ago was accepted (Yeah) with many helpful comments (Yeah) but way too late to help those students get into grad school (they did anyway- Yeah). We had forgotten what we wrote and why we cared.  (Boo) We did get the corrections done and resubmitted it. So I could say it will be out soon. But that's the weird thing-we posted it to arxivs three years ago so its been out for a while. 

14) I wish California could build high-speed rail from LA to San Francisco. If California’s Democrats could show they could do this, it would be an electoral boon to Democrats nationally.

BILL: This seems fine but seems like an arbitrary thing to want as opposed to other pairs of cities and other achievement.

15) I wish the US could build clean energy, including wind, solar, and nuclear. Actually, more generally, we should do everything recommended in Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s phenomenal new book Abundance, which I just finished.

BILL: You inspired me to recommend the book Abundance to my book club. This is the second time that's happened- I also had them read the Stephen Pinker Book Enlightenment Now based on your blogs recommendation.

BILL: Some of the problem is political and some is technical. I don't know how much of each.

16) The great questions of philosophy—why does the universe exist? how does consciousness relate to the physical world? what grounds morality?—are worthy of respect, as primary drivers of human curiosity for millennia. Scientists and engineers should never sneer at these questions. All the same, I personally couldn’t spend my life on such questions: I also need small problems, ones where I can make definite progress.

BILL: Indeed-I like well defined questions that have answers, even if they are hard to answer. The  questions you raise are above my pay grade. 

17) Quantum physics, which turns 100 this year, is arguably the most metaphysical of all empirical discoveries. It’s worthy of returning to again and again in life, asking: but how could the world be that way? Is there a different angle that we missed?

BILL: I can either have an opinion on this or defer to one of the worlds leading authorities  on the topic.

18) If I knew for sure that I could achieve Enlightenment, but only by meditating on a mountaintop for a decade, a further question would arise: is it worth it? Or would I rather spend that decade engaged with the world, with scientific problems and with other people?

BILL: If that enlightenment includes obtaining a proof that P NE NP then sign me up!

19) I, too, vote for political parties, and have sectarian allegiances. But I’m most moved by human creative effort, in science or literature or anything else, that transcends time and place and circumstance and speaks to the eternal.

BILL: I find myself less interested in politics and more interested in math. Non-partisan example: I read many articles about who Trump will pick for his VP. Then he picked one. I then read many articles about who Harris will pick for her VP.Then she picked one. I WISH I HAD SPENT THAT TIME ON THE POLYNOMIAL-HALES-JEWITT THEOREM INSTEAD!

20) As I was writing this post, a bird died by flying straight into the window of my home office. As little sense as it might make from a utilitarian standpoint, I am sad for that bird.

BILL: If we could ,without too much effort, make this not happen in the future,  that would be good. There were some suggestions for that in your blog comments.