This is the question posed by Pedro Domingos in his book The Master Algorithm:How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World. The book provides an in-depth overview of machine ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a ...

Since the very first days of computer science — a field known for its methodical approach to problem-solving — randomness has played an important role. The first program to run on the world’s first ...