computer science

Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language

by
Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language

Many of today’s programmers—excuse me, software engineers—consider themselves “creatives.” Artists of a sort. They are given to ostentatious personal websites with cleverly hidden Easter eggs and parallax scrolling; they confer upon themselves multihyphenate job titles (“ex-Amazon-engineer-investor-author”) and crowd their laptops with identity-signaling vinyl stickers. Some regard themselves as literary sophisticates. Consider the references smashed into … Read more

New Evidence Shows Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement

by
New Evidence Shows Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement

But not all questions about quantum systems are easier to answer using quantum algorithms. Some are equally easy for classical algorithms, which run on ordinary computers, while others are hard for both classical and quantum ones. To understand where quantum algorithms and the computers that can run them might offer an advantage, researchers often analyze … Read more

Large Language Models’ Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage

by
Large Language Models’ Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark, or BIG-bench, 450 researchers compiled a list of 204 tasks designed to test the capabilities of large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT. On most tasks, performance improved predictably and smoothly … Read more