{"id":160182,"date":"2023-03-13T16:23:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T21:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/the-limits-of-computing-why-even-in-the-age-of-ai-some-problems-are-just-too-difficult"},"modified":"2023-03-13T16:23:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T21:23:17","slug":"the-limits-of-computing-why-even-in-the-age-of-ai-some-problems-are-just-too-difficult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/the-limits-of-computing-why-even-in-the-age-of-ai-some-problems-are-just-too-difficult","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of Computing: Why Even in the Age of AI, Some Problems Are Just Too Difficult"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/108650530?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"640\" height=\"272\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Empowered by <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/tag\/artificial-intelligence\/\">artificial intelligence<\/a> technologies, computers today can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2022\/12\/openai-chatgpt-chatbot-messages\/672411\/\">engage in convincing conversations<\/a> with people, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/mach\/science\/ai-can-now-compose-pop-music-even-symphonies-here-s-ncna1010931\">compose songs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/06\/technology\/openai-images-dall-e.html\">paint paintings<\/a>, play <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2018\/12\/10\/how-deepminds-alphazero-mastered-complex-games-with-no-human-input\/\">chess and go<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s12652-021-03612-z\">diagnose diseases<\/a>, to name just a few examples of their technological prowess.<\/p>\n<p>These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that\u2019s the case, it\u2019s important to understand what makes a computer powerful.<\/p>\n<p>There are two aspects to a computer\u2019s power: the number of operations its hardware can execute per second and the efficiency of the algorithms it runs. The hardware speed is limited by the laws of physics. Algorithms\u2014basically <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/what-is-an-algorithm-how-computers-know-what-to-do-with-data-146665\">sets of instructions <\/a>\u2014are written by humans and translated into a sequence of operations that computer hardware can execute. Even if a computer\u2019s speed could reach the physical limit, computational hurdles remain due to the limits of algorithms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Empowered by artificial intelligence technologies, computers today can engage in convincing conversations with people, compose songs, paint paintings, play chess and go, and diagnose diseases, to name just a few examples of their technological prowess. These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that\u2019s the case, it\u2019s important [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,41,42,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-information-science","category-media-arts","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}