Re: Key length security (calculations!)

James Donald writes:
> Timothy C. May writes
> > ... if P = NP, then fast factoring
> > methods may be found (fast = polynomial in length). 
> 
> In the highly unlikely event that P = NP then we have also solved, as
> an almost trivial special case, the problems of true artificial
> intelligence, artificial consciousness, and artificial perception,
> and the failure of one particular form of crypto will not be noticed
> in the midst of such radical changes.

  When was AI proved NP? AFAIK, definitions of intelligence
and consciousness aren't even generally agreed on. Consciousness
especially.  Any citations on this claim? The only place I've
heard this before was your claim on the Extropians list last year that
AI required solving NP problems (and that a good answer would not
work), therefore classical computers couldn't do it, but quantum
computers could, and therefore the mind is based on quantum mechanics
and AI won't work.

James Donald writes:
> > In the highly unlikely event that P = NP then we have also solved, as
> > an almost trivial special case, the problems of true artificial
> > intelligence, artificial consciousness, and artificial perception,
> > and the failure of one particular form of crypto will not be noticed
> > in the midst of such radical changes.

Ray writes
>   When was AI proved NP? 

It has not been proved to be NP.  But all known methods are NP.  If
P=NP then these methods could be executed in polynomial time.

If there is nothing strange about the brain, then either AI is not
NP, or P=NP

We are wandering rather far from cryptography, so I will refrain
from discussing the description of the perception problem in
terms of a special case of a problem whose general case is NP
complete.


-- 
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We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we              James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.                jamesd@netcom.com