The Beautiful World
Lance Fortnow · Princeton University Press eBooks · 2017
This chapter examines an efficient algorithm that solves NP problems, the Urbana algorithm. With the Urbana algorithm one can solve all the NP problems quickly, finding the simplest program that classifies data becomes an easy programming exercise. All one needs do is feed in lots of data and the algorithm does the rest. And that lets one learn just about everything. If it turns out that P = NP and the world has efficient algorithms for all NP problems, it will change in ways that will make the Internet seem like a footnote in history. Not only would it be impossible to describe all these changes but the biggest implications of the new technologies would be impossible to predict.