Computation as a “new” old -frontier

Human are not designed to think in exponential terms! Ask your friends basic numerical questions and see how quickly they can enumerate the answers. However, try ask them about 789 x 789, the machine collapse.

During high school, I remember being considered smart if you could impute some random calculations of various form ranging from algebra to calculus. Of course, not to diminish the matter, there is value in doing those exercises and probably survivorship biased might affect my valuation of them now. Yet, it soon became obvious that one mental competence is not actually good at solving these calculations mechanically by hands, but rather understand the underlying principle and let the computers solve them for you.

First, in computational applied you will learn the invaluable lessons of a computing power in doing all those non-linear computations which will make your hair go gray very quickly if you try doing it manually. Here one gets to appreciate the novelty of computing power, at least at small scale. Even more interesting is to think that the two-by-two simultaneous equation solvable by simple rows and column manipulation can become very complex as soon as one scale the number of equations in it. Immediately, the human brain is at the mercy of the computer in solving these problems quickly.

Now that might not seem like a valuable use of computational power, until you start considering it is use in other areas. Computational power is lifesaving tool. Think of going to a hospital in Tanzania in 2024. At arrival, often a nurse will go through ungodly number of files to search for you card which record your last visit or else you should just lie about you having visited the hospital previously to fast track the process. Well, but that will cost you money, so you are immediately out of pocket even before receiving treatment, this can be infeasible for most poor folks so they will partake the manual search exercise. Some die waiting for their last visit form to be found. Could computing systematization of sorting and storage solve this problem, you bet it does.

Computation is very valuable, and one might not appreciate it until one spend some time thinking what is achievable using computation in solving interesting problems. From designing rescue robots in war zones, nuclear accident in Japan, logistics planning around the world, the beloved financial world of trillions of transactions in a matter of hours to sorting cucumbers in supermarkets. Computing is everywhere. Computing also free humans from some dreadful jobs, reduce accidents and improve quality of life. Just imagine how computation have rid us of those repetitive tasks.

If you live in a world with little understanding of technologies you get to appreciate, how lack of it affect society perceptions. Say a choice of a partner in a world where technologies have not rid human of cooking, washing chores and the likes. Observe how value is attributed in a partner. “Good cook can keep the place clean and so forth” all of these signal a need of mechanical turk than a partner, it seems to me.

In fact, in low computing environment, people valuation has more to do with mechanical computing (physical labor), chores and the like than other things. Of course this is not general, but neither it is not marginal.

This quarter me and my reading collegue are reading about AI, to educate ourself a little bit about the apex of computing power. So far I can recommend you read

1. The Worlds I see by Dr. Fei Fei

2. Chip War by Chrill Miller

3. A brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett

Have a happy worker day