A few years ago I used an algorithm to help me write a science fiction story. Adam Hammond, an English professor, and Julian Brooke, a computer scientist, had created a program called SciFiQ, and ...

As software and algorithms become an increasingly pervasive part of our lives, there’s growing interest and concern on how they are affecting society, the economy, and politics. Yet, most social ...

It may be that life is just an example of Grover’s quantum search at work, and that this algorithm is itself a fundamental property of nature. That’s a Big Idea if ever there was one.

That’s what algorithms provide for society: a shortcut to getting a computer to do something it normally couldn’t. Algorithms provide the instructions for almost any AI system you can think of: ...

So, an algorithm is the process a computer uses to transform input data into output data. A simple concept, and yet every piece of technology that you touch involves many algorithms.

Here’s a simple example of the way algorithms can result in a biased outcome based on what it learns from the people who use it.