Computer scientists contemplate whether the time required to compute a solution is out of reach for the hardest problems. The question of Does P = NP? is now treated as a multi-prompt session with the GPT-4 language model. The greatest insight of the work may be how to prune past chat sessions to maintain a discussion. artpartner-images/Getty Images
When computer scientists hang out at cocktail parties, they’re apt to chat, among other things, about the single most important unsolved problem in computer science: the question, Does P = NP?
Formulated nearly 50 years ago, the question of whether P equals NP is a deep meditation on what can ultimately be achieved with computers. The question, which has implications for fields such as cryptography and quantum computing, has resisted a convincing answer despite decades of intense study. Now, that effort has enlisted the help of generative AI.
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