Intro to Complexity MOOC: 27,000 served and counting

Class Central, a site that collects information and reviews on thousands of online courses from around the world, recently ranked SFI’s “Introduction to Complexity” online course highest among 614 other online science courses.

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What kind of human-AI hybrid do we wish to become?

In Nautilus, SFI President David Krakauer takes a critical look at artificial intelligence in light of humanity's long tradition of using tools to augment cognition — and our more recent, perhaps darker tendency to let them do the thinking for us.

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A way to secure future computers: Limit their capabilities

An attacker who gains access to a general-purpose machine can exploit its broad computational abilities to accomplish nefarious ends. As more devices go online – through cloud computing, connected cars, and the internet of things, for example – security becomes an increasing threat and challenge.

 
 
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Toward the limit: SFI research meets application

Applied Complexity Network (ACtioN) in London which drew participants from business and government, followed a meeting of scientists that took place in August at SFI. Both meetings concerned factors that determine the precision and reliability with which a system’s behavior can be predicted.

 
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How cheating arises, evolves

Malicious behavior is similarly common in the natural world, where agents tend a means to enter a system and subvert its rules in their favor.

 
 
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Mind-numbing or crowd-wise? Optimizing problem solving

When big problems arise, we insist on the power of many brains. At the same time, everyday work meetings are notoriously dull and fruitless. Can certain conditions nudge collaborative problem solving in a more reliably productive direction?

 
 
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Prediction: How good can we get?

Scientists are getting better at prediction, but there’s good reason to believe we will eventually bump up against some fundamental limits. A recent workshop at SFI asked where those limits might be.

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