Ask HN: What are the most exciting areas of research in CS right now? - aharbi
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ihsoj
Explainable AI (XAI) [https://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-
intelli...](https://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-intelligence)

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elliekelly
This will be a critical component of AI adoption in high risk and/or highly
regulated industries like health care, banking, utilities, etc.

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earthicus
I've seen Keenan Crane of CMU give some great applications of differential
geometry to computational geometry and manufacturing/fabrication. He has a
book on applied discrete differential geometry available here [1] and also a
good youtube channel [2] with talks showing applications. A good nontechnical
talk giving an overview of the basics and the motivation for the formalism is
[3]. A nontechnical talk showing an application to fabrication is [4].

[1]
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/DGPDEC/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/DGPDEC/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/keenancrane/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/keenancrane/videos)

[3] [https://youtu.be/Mcal5Cy7r4E?t=408](https://youtu.be/Mcal5Cy7r4E?t=408)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiekJeTEQ-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiekJeTEQ-U)

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DrNuke
Ternary computing (fashionable again because of IoTA platform), n-computing,
quantum computing (this waiting for hardware breakthrough).

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throwawaymath
Ternary is fashionable again because of IOTA? As in the
cryptocurrency/network?

...since when? To put it bluntly I don't think any mainstream academic
community takes IOTA seriously. Its stated justifications for using ternary
computing are pretty weak, theoretical benefits notwithstanding.

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DrNuke
You’re welcome, mainstream academic communities do a different job, though. I
can see the long-term benefits in trying something technologically novel to
accommodate a fully interconnected IoT planet but I am not paid by IOTA to
evangelize, so, again, we will see what happens.

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throwawaymath
Sure, but we can agree IOTA hasn't made anything "fashionable" again right? If
it's not being taken seriously by the research community and it hasn't
otherwise driven material innovation, it's not setting any trends.

There has always been research interest in ternary computing. But I don't know
a single serious research institution or group (even if not academic) which
concurs with IOTA's approach.

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DrNuke
Well, their vision is shared by industrial partners indeed. I presume we are
seeing this from different perspectives (mine: industrial ability within some
limitations; yours: full theoretical validation) and maybe we need to agree
which is which for “exciting areas of research” and “fashionable”?

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LiamPa
This was asked recently and some really good topics mentioned:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17696271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17696271)

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bchip
[http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/toptwtr](http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/toptwtr)

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throwaway12746
Machine Learning is very marketable right now.

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fierro
very insightful tyvm

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tetek
algorithmic game theory

