rickb928 - Slashdot User

Submission + - AI Agents Are Mathematically Incapable of Doing Functional Work, Paper Finds (wired.com)

Submitted by rickb928 on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @09:52AM

rickb928 writes: From futurism.com , a report: Vishal Sikka, a former CTO at the German software giant SAP, and his son Varin Sikka, authored a months-old but until now overlooked study, recently featured in Wired, that claims to mathematically prove that large language models “are incapable of carrying out computational and agentic tasks beyond a certain complexity” — that level of complexity being, crucially, pretty low.

The paper, which has not been peer reviewed, was written by Vishal Sikka, a former CTO at the German software giant SAP, and his son Varin Sikka. Sikka senior knows a thing or two about AI: he studied under John McCarthy, the Turing Award-winning computer scientist who literally founded the entire field of artificial intelligence, and in fact helped coin the very term.

Perhaps the fears of AI taking over are somewhat exaggerated. Not that it will not, some day, but it seems the math isn't there. I, for one, do not welcome our earnest but limited AI overlords.

Submission + - Reporters at Black Hat get bounced for hacking (ap.org)

Submitted by rickb928 on Friday August 08, 2008 @04:13PM

rickb928 writes: So some reporters at Black Hat decided to teach the other reporters in the press room about the importance of securing their connections. They must have been thinking "hmm.. this is Black Hat, so why not hack their ids and passords and stuff, and show them how pwned they are, right?".

Not so funny. At Black Hat, hacking is encouraged. Everywhere except the Press Room, apparently.

So the reporters, from the French magazine 'Global Security Magazine', apparently did the unthinkable — hack at Black Hat:

"The French journalists — identified by organizers as Dominique Jouniot, Marc Brami, Mauro Israel — apparently set up their own server to siphon off traffic passing through the media room's central router."

Once again, hacking is cool. Unless, of course, it's done at you, or where you don't want it to be done.

Right back at ya, Black Hat.

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