"Intelligent Heuristics Are the Future of Computing"

As a student in the field of the theory of computation, I was naturally perplexed but fascinated by this perspective. I had been trained to believe that "Algorithms and computational complexity theory are the foundation of computer science." However, as it happens, my attempts to understand heuristics in computing have subsequently played a significant role in my career as a theoretical computer scientist. I have come to realize that Berliner's postulation is a far-reaching worldview, particularly in the age of big, rich, complex, and multifaceted data and models, when computing has ubiquitous interactions with science, engineering, humanity, and society. In this article,(2) I will share some of my experiences on the subject of heuristics in computing, presenting examples of theoretical attempts to understand the behavior of heuristics on real data, as well as efforts to design practical heuristics with desirable theoretical characterizations. My hope is that these theoretical insights frompast heuristics-such as spectral partitioning, multilevelmethods, evolutionary algorithms, and simplex methods-can shed light on and further inspire a deeper understanding of the current and future techniques in AI and data mining.