Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing

2/2 Somesh Jha (@someshjha.bsky.social) spoke of the need to view the safety of machine learning systems through the lens of security and cryptography at the Simons Institute's workshop on Theoretical Aspects of Trustworthy AI. Video (Part II): simons.berkeley.edu/talks/somesh...

1/2 “A subset of people in our community have attacked watermarking, black box evasion attacks, inference attacks, and so on.” Somesh Jha of @uwmadison.bsky.social on the weaknesses of ML Robustness research, speaking at the Simons Institute. Video (Part I): simons.berkeley.edu/talks/somesh...

Next week at the Simons Institute, the final workshop in the Summer 2025 Cryptography program: Secure Computation.

simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/se...

This is what cryptography looks like.

Pizza theorem - Wikipedia

Fun facts: the Pizza theorem 🍕 states that if Alice and Bob cut a pizza in 4k slices (for k≥2) and take alternating slices, they'll get the same amount even if the cutting wasn't centered.

It was proven by Upton in 1968.

Before that, nobody knew how to cut pizza.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_t...

2/2 "We don’t know [if the primitives] actually exist. We rely on computational hardness assumptions in order to achieve that." — Rafael Pass of @cornelltech.bsky.social at the Simons Institute's workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp.

1/2 "To prove the existence of secure encryption, all we require is proving that P != NP. If P = NP, then we can break all of these primitives [fundamental algorithms used in cryptography]." — Rafael Pass of @cornelltech.bsky.social at the Simons Institute. Video: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/rafael...

2/2 Compared to cryptanalysis, “it’s not that hard to attack ML systems,” said Carlini, at the Simons Institute's workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp. Video: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/nichol...

1/2 Cryptanalysis has a rigor that machine learning lacks. “There would never be a paper accepted in crypto where the attack was ‘run the attack 5 times and it works [once].’ This is true of the world of ML." @anthropicai.bsky.social's Nicholas Carlini said at the Simons Institute...

2/2 "The field is moving...much faster than we know how to make things safe," said Carlini. Cryptographers and security experts have the analytical skills to help make ML safe. "Maybe we can keep pace to make things not get any worse than they are now." Video: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/nichol...

1/2 "We need help!" @anthropicai.bsky.social's Nicholas Carlini called for cryptanalysis experts to join efforts to make ML safe, at the Simons Institute's workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp Video: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/nichol...

2/2 Sahai spoke at the Simons Institute workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp, and credited Rahul Ilango. Full video of talk here: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/amit-s...

1/2 UCLA's Amit Sahai passed on advice from The Lion King's Pumba on how two words — "Hakuna Matata", or rather, "Indistinguishability Obfuscation" (compiling programs into unintelligible ones while preserving functionality) — solve many problems in cryptography and more.

What's obfuscation in computing? UCLA's Amit Sahai jokingly began his tutorial with a "gruesomely human" analogy, at the Simons Institute's workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp. Video here: simons.berkeley.edu/talks/amit-s...

Next week at the Simons Institute, a workshop on Proofs. Join us!

simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/pr...

Quantum Summer Cluster Workshop

#SimonsQuantum

Beyond cryptography: the use of factorization to evaluate the power of a quantum computer Last year at a cryptography conference in the University of California, Santa Barbara, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, a computer scientist from MIT gave a talk on the hardness of factoring integers in the f…

Harnessing factorization – beyond its use to crack #encryption - to evaluate the power of a #quantumcomputer. My latest blog: scieye.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/b...
Many thanks to Seyoon Ragavan for chatting with me about the topic & his work!

2/2 Private-key cryptography might be more secure. The typical schemes "seem immune to Shor's algorithm," but might need to double key sizes to deal with potential quadratic speedups provided by Grover's algorithm. — Mark Zhandry at the Simons Institute. simons.berkeley.edu/talks/mark-z...

1/2 Today's classical public-key cryptography is vulnerable to adversarial quantum attacks — @nttresearch.bsky.social's Mark Zhandry at the Simons Institute's workshop on Cryptography 10 Years Later: Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation Boot Camp. simons.berkeley.edu/talks/mark-z...

Catch up on the talks from this week's ongoing Quantum Summer Cluster Workshop. Register to watch the livestream and get early access to the talk recordings.

simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/qu...

#SimonsQuantum

Have we achieved AGI? No, said UC Berkeley's Stuart Russell at the Simons Institute's workshop on Theoretical Aspects of Trustworthy AI. LLMs are likely a piece of the AGI jigsaw puzzle, but we don't know their shape or where they fit in the overall puzzle. simons.berkeley.edu/talks/stuart...

"We need more (connections with) theory" — UC Berkeley's Sanjit Seshia, arguing for pushing theory into the design of AI systems and verification tools, to enable trustworthy AI, at the Simons Institute's workshop on Theoretical Aspects of Trustworthy AI. www.youtube.com/live/Xkbgym0...

A group (subset of the attendees), lined up in the street, in front of a wooden bear sculpture

And this wraps up the Sublinear Algorithms reunion at the Simons Institute! Great people, captivating talks, lots of discussions, and (as usual) fantastic support from the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social 's staff/team.

[Below, a (partial) group photo, taken during a (very successful) lunch expedition]

Soheil, in front of his title slide, at the lectern

Day 2: starting with a talk on "Vizing's Theorem in near-linear time" by Soheil Behnezhad! @simonsinstitute.bsky.social

We deeply appreciate our partners and sponsors, including individuals like you, who support the Simons Institute’s research on the foundations of computing. Thank you!

We're delighted to share that Bridgewater Associates will be supporting postdocs in our ML Pod, and that we've received an Amazon Research Award for this summer’s Cryptography program.

The Cryptography program is also supported by the UC Noyce Initiative and Stellar.

At the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social at Berkeley for the week, attending the Sublinear Algorithms reunion: simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/su...

Looking forward to the talks, the discussions, and being spooked by the campus' squirrels.

Ronitt Rubinfeld, starting the reunion by thanking the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social!

The Simons Institute invites proposals for Science Communicator in Residence visits of 1–3 weeks during the Fall 2025 semester. Applications are due August 1, 2025.

simons.berkeley.edu/participate/...

Screenshot of the (first) page of the scribe notes for the "Hidden Gems" curated and illustrated by Nathan Harms

Ahead of the Sublinear Algorithms reunion next week at the @simonsinstitute.bsky.social, scribe notes for last year's "hidden gems" and open problems (curated by Nathan Harms and Santhoshini Velusamy) have been uploaded to the reunion's webpage:

Check them out: simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/su...