Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions; Brian Christian, BayCHI Program
Channel: BayCHI, San Francisco Bay Area ACM SIGCHI
Date: 2022-06-18

September 13, 2016
https://baychi.org/calendar/20160913/
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us. Brian Christian will discuss his recent book, co-written with UC Berkeley cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.