Charles Jackson Paul in The Texas Orator:
Dr. Scott Aaronson is the David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at UT Austin. He is known for his work as a computer scientist and research into complexity theory and quantum computing, and more recently for his work at OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, on AI alignment. I sat down with Dr. Aaronson to talk about the nature of quantum computing, why we should care, and his thoughts on the recent developments in artificial intelligence.
Jackson: Good afternoon, Professor, thank you for joining us. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Dr. Aaronson: Thanks for having me. I’m Scott Aronson. I am a computer science professor here at UT. I’ve spent 20 years working on the theory of quantum computation. But I’m actually on leave for a couple of years now to work at OpenAI, on the theoretical foundations of AI safety.
Jackson: Can you summarize your area of research?
Dr. Aaronson: I’m a theoretical computer scientist. My training is mostly in computational complexity theory, which is the field that studies the inherent capabilities and limitations of computers, under constraints on resources. So, you know, what can you do with limited time and limited memory? What is the inherent scaling that is required to solve problems? Is it polynomial? Or is it exponential with the size of the problem that you’re trying to solve?
More here.