Re: coding and nnet's

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 7:52 PM 11/10/95, Bill Stewart wrote:

>Schneier's 2nd edition says "Neural nets aren't terribly useful for
>cryptography,
>primarily because of the shape of the solution space.  Neural nets work
>best for
>problems that have a continuity of solutions, some better than others.
>This allows a neural net to learn, proposing better and better solutions as
>it does.
>Breaking an algorithm provides for very little in the way of learning
>opportunities:
>You either recover the key or you don't. (At least this is true if the
>algorithm is
>any good.)  Neural nets work well in structured environments when there is
>something
>to learn, but not in the high-entropy, seemingly random world of cryptography."
>And he doesn't give any references.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This paragraph sounds a _lot_ like what I wrote in sci.crypt a while back
on the usefullness of AI and neural nets for crypto. Sounds almost like
exactly the paragraph I wrote, in fact.

And I recollect that Bruce dropped me a note saying I made the point
succinctly and that he wanted to use what I said in his next edition. (My
recollection at least, but I don't have any easy way anymore of searching
my several hundred megs of accumulated mail, articles, etc.)

I have no problem with Bruce using my points. I hope he didn't use my
_exact_ words, though. But not a cosmic issue.

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
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