Featured in Five is a monthly section where we pose five questions to a Computing Reviews featured reviewer. Here are the responses from our September featured reviewer, Marcelo Finger.
Q: What is the most important thing that's happened in computing in the past 10 years?
A: There have been many important, fascinating developments in the past few years. Remaining only within the AI field, where most of my work is done, I would like to mention two amazing developments. First, a point that has not received a lot of media attention but is very important on a scientific level is the increase in efficiency of SAT solvers, exploring the fact that most NP-complete problem instances are, in fact, easily solvable; we can effectively solve SAT problems with hundreds of thousands variables while, say, 25 years ago, people still thought that we could solve NP-complete problems with only a few dozens of variables. This success has facilitated the creation of more sophisticated tools, such as SMT-solvers, automated hardware and software verification, and much more. Also, neural networks have finally achieved the ability to process huge amounts of data and to start delivering on the promises of intelligent tasks, in some areas that have been around since the late 1950s.
Q: By the end of your career, where do you think computer science will have taken us? What are you working on that might contribute to that?
A: Computers have modified the way we lead our lives. I hope that by the end of my career, computers can address important issues that they have created, such as job extinction, attention diversion created by smartphones and tablets, and other issues that didn’t exist before that lifestyle transformation took place.
Q: Who is your favorite historical figure? Why?
A: Albert Einstein is a person that never ceases to fascinate me, not only due to the greatness of his work and the originality of his point of view, but because that work was developed in an extremely chaotic time, going through two World Wars and the Cold War, anti-Semitism, and fascism, among other background political developments. He never lost that human touch with everything he was involved with.
Q: If you weren't working in the computer science field, what would you be doing instead?
A: I would work on environmentally related topics, such as CO2 emission mitigation, forest replanting, or something similar.
Q: What is your favorite type of music?
A: My favorite kind of music Brazilian popular music, which includes bossa nova, samba, and instrumental music. But I listen to many other forms of music as well.
--
Click here to learn more about him, and here to read one of his recent reviews.
Comments