P=NP classroom poll flip: from one believer in 2022 to a third of the class in 2025
aran_nayebi · x · 2026-10-08
- Researcher Aran Nayebi amplified an anecdote: in Fall 2022, an algorithms class poll on P vs NP got exactly one hand for P=NP; by the two 2025 iterations, nearly a third raised their hands.
- The trigger: a half-joking lament that sub-n log n FFT, subcubic APSP, and subquadratic 3SUM shake the belief that humans were ever good at algorithms—updating to "maybe P=NP, via some clever SAT algorithm GPT-8 discovers running in n^c time for c 10^6."
- The kicker: students growing up with AI will eventually wonder why we were ever stuck on math problems AI now solves in seconds.
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