Tech
A New Algorithm Makes It Faster to Find the Shortest Paths
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle the easiest pieces first. But this kind of sorting has a cost. You may end up spending too much time putting the pieces in order.
This dilemma is especially relevant to one of the most iconic problems in computer science: finding the shortest path from a specific starting point in a network to every other point. It’s like a souped-up version of a problem you need to solve each time you move: learning the best route from your new home to work, the gym, and the supermarket.
“Shortest paths is a beautiful problem that anyone in the world can relate to,” said Mikkel Thorup, a computer scientist at the University of Copenhagen.
Intuitively, it should be easiest to find the shortest path to nearby destinations. So if you want to design the fastest possible algorithm for the shortest-paths problem, it seems reasonable to start by finding the closest point, then the next-closest, and so on. But to do that, you need to repeatedly figure out which point is closest. You’ll sort the points by distance as you go. There’s a fundamental speed limit for any algorithm that follows this approach: You can’t go any faster than the time it takes to sort.
Forty years ago, researchers designing shortest-paths algorithms ran up against this “sorting barrier.” Now, a team of researchers has devised a new algorithm that breaks it. It doesn’t sort, and it runs faster than any algorithm that does.
“The authors were audacious in thinking they could break this barrier,” said Robert Tarjan, a computer scientist at Princeton University. “It’s an amazing result.”
The Frontier of Knowledge
To analyze the shortest-paths problem mathematically, researchers use the language of graphs—networks of points, or nodes, connected by lines. Each link between nodes is labeled with a number called its weight, which can represent the length of that segment or the time needed to traverse it. There are usually many routes between any two nodes, and the shortest is the one whose weights add up to the smallest number. Given a graph and a specific “source” node, an algorithm’s goal is to find the shortest path to every other node.
The most famous shortest-paths algorithm, devised by the pioneering computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra in 1956, starts at the source and works outward step by step. It’s an effective approach, because knowing the shortest path to nearby nodes can help you find the shortest paths to more distant ones. But because the end result is a sorted list of shortest paths, the sorting barrier sets a fundamental limit on how fast the algorithm can run.
Tech
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Tech
MPs launch inquiry into use of tech in education | Computer Weekly
MPs have launched an inquiry into the use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
The cross-party Education Select Committee will look at how technology can both help and hinder the UK’s education sector, not just in schools, but also colleges, universities and early years services.
“AI and EdTech are already reshaping education, from the early years and secondary school right through to college and university,” said Helen Hayes, chair of the committee.
“These tools could represent an extraordinary opportunity to elevate learning and streamline teachers’ busy workloads. At the same time, there are risks in deploying rapidly developing technology without any clear values-based decision-making or evaluation framework, and without a full understanding of the consequences, and there is a potential risk of widening inequality between students.”
Educators are already dipping their toes into the tech sphere, for example, at Bett Show 2025, it was announced the government had plans to help teachers use AI for lesson planning and marking, and Ofsted found many schools are experimenting with the use of AI for personalised learning, translation of resources, and turning lessons and other resources into podcasts.
The government has already started looking into the potential uses of AI in schools and other education establishments, including the development of AI tools for 1:1 tutoring, but AI is causing a number of concerns among students and parents alike, with parents changing their career advice to children as a result of widespread AI adoption.
As pointed out by education secretary Bridget Phillipson in early 2026, the government has to “get this right” for the technology to meet its potential as the “biggest boost for education in the last 500 years”.
The Education Select Committee will look into several areas of tech and AI adoption in education, including how it will affect skills, safeguarding issues and how teachers will cope with tech deployment.
Access to technology, AI and digital tech has the potential to widen the diversity divide in the UK, and the committee will consider whether introducing AI risks making this issue worse.
When it comes to tech’s impact on skills, the committee will look into how AI specifically will affect critical thinking, problem solving and speech development.
Teachers have a longstanding issue with tech deployment and teaching tech skills, so how they are supported in implementing tech during teaching, as well as ensuring they can properly use it, will need to be considered. The committee will also explore how tech and AI may change the way assessments are undertaken.
How AI and tech is integrated into each level of education in the UK has the potential to either massively help or catastrophically hinder the UK’s education delivery and skills development.
“Our inquiry will take a hard look at the evidence, and separate AI fact from fiction,” said Hayes. “We will explore how AI and EdTech are already being used and consider how the government can balance its benefits with safeguards against the risks it poses.
“The committee wants to understand how technology is shaping children and young people’s lives and learning, and what more the government needs to do to ensure that every child and young person is able to thrive,” she said. “I encourage anyone with experience in this area to submit evidence to our inquiry.”
Tech
What Is That Mysterious Metallic Device US Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia Is Using?
Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb and the US Chief Design Officer appointed by Trump, was spotted in San Francisco today using a mysterious metallic device. In a social media post on X viewed over 500,000 times, a man who looks like Gebbia sits with an espresso at a coffee shop. He’s wearing metallic buds that bisect his ears, with a matching clamshell-shaped disc in front of him on the counter.
After the video was posted Monday morning, social media users were quick to suggest that this could be some kind of prototype from OpenAI’s upcoming line of hardware devices designed in partnership with famed Apple designer Jony Ive. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the potential Gebbia video after WIRED reached out. Gebbia also did not respond to a request for comment.
The device Gebbia appears to be wearing looks quite similar to the hardware seen in a fake OpenAI ad that was widely circulated on Reddit and social media in February. That video from last month seemingly showed Pillion actor Alexander Skarsgård interacting with an AI device that had a similar-looking pair of earbuds and a circular disc. At the time, OpenAI denounced the widely seen video as not real. “Fake news,” wrote OpenAI President Greg Brockman at the time, responding to a social media post.
The earbuds seen in the video of Gebbia also look quite similar in shape to the Huawei FreeClip 2, a pair of open earbuds released earlier this year. However, the clamshell seen on the coffee counter next to Gebbia is different from Huawei’s most recent headphone case. It would also be quite surprising if a government official were seen using Huawei tech, considering the Chinese company is effectively banned from selling its phones in the US due to security concerns.
WIRED’s audio experts say he’s most likely wearing open earbuds, as Gebbia’s pair share some similarities with Soundcore’s AeroClips or Sony’s LinkBuds Clip, though the cases for those buds don’t match what’s on the table in front of Gebbia. WIRED also ran the photo and video through software that attempts to identify AI-generated outputs and other deepfakes. The detection software, from a company called Hive, says the odds are low that this imagery of Gebbia was generated by AI. Still, AI detectors are not always reliable and can include false outputs. It’s possible that the entire post could be a synthetic hoax.
Could this be some kind of soft launch teaser for OpenAI’s hardware? The timing of this trickle out would make sense, since the company may ship devices to consumers sometime early in 2027. Still, OpenAI denied any involvement with the previous pseudo-ad for the metallic AI hardware, with its shiny earbuds and matching disc.
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