Andi had a great idea. He asked some well-known computer scientists via email the following question:

What are the most important problems in computer science?

He got some very interesting replies. Some of them were very general, some were quite specific. Some are down to earth and some are based on an utopian demand. And Andi asked for his readers’ opinions. Well, as a student I can’t compete with my professors, but I can try to make a good point.

Computers are the creation of humans. They have emerged out of nothing, they have been invented and developed on the basis of science and the art of engineering. They are intended to help the humans, to solve their problems and to do the work that is not worth to consume the humans’ precious time. But the humans currently are not able to communicate with their own creation in and intuitive an natural way. Until now it has been impossible to teach the elementary basis of human interaction to a computer. We have to rely on strange languages that are too limited to be called a human language. They cannot compete with even the easiest expressions of a natural language, although they are able to describe everything that is turing-complete. So we have to give up all intuitive and natural approaches and have to develop models and techniques (the scientist calls them algorithms) we would not even consider in a manual approach. Until now we are only able to solve a specific problem with a computer if we have already found a general solution for a whole group of similar problems. And finding that general solution and putting it in a model that is interpretable by a computer is quite difficult.

So the great challenge in computer science is definitely linked to cognition, perception and communication. Intuitive matters like “learning by example”, communication in natural speech and perception of events beside mouse gestures and key presses should be in the center of computer science. If there was one program that is usable by everyone in an intuitive way and that is capable of solving any solvable problem, then the computer scientists have won.

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