What do a Boeing autopilot and a vote-counting system have in common?
During the elections in Russia, the results of 146 percent famously caused uproar. Yuri Karpov, PhD and a specialist in distributed computing and computer networks, said that the reason for this figure could have been parallel processes taking place on a large number of computers simultaneously working on the same data. In parallel access, the processes can interfere with each other.

“Parallel processes are very difficult to execute, so it’s very possible that they were the root of the mistake,” he said. “No matter how much you spend on cameras at voting locations, they can’t prevent superposition of individual teams during this process. Therefore missing votes are a mistake of programming.”

Parallel programs are becoming more and more common but they’re also very difficult to understand because a human brain mostly processes tasks consecutively. Software of this kind is very prone to mistakes.

“During the first Iraq war over 24% of casualties were caused by friendly fire,” Dr. Karpov said. “Some of them can be explained by malfunctioning control systems.  We’re also on that list – in 1988, communications were lots with Fobos 1 after a command was incorrectly interpreted by the control system.”

On the issue of genetically modified food, Aleksand Ishevsky, professor of food processing at ITMO University, discussed the problem of soil depletion and the adoption of flavor additives.

“Most of the noise about genetically modified food happens when one of the market leaders starts losing positons,” he said. “Back in the day, Monsato said that genetically modified food is not that great after China and Japan started to use genetic modifications and its products started to take over the marketplace. We’re afraid that genetically modified food will change our genome but we’re not afraid of eating poorly. When you systematically eat sandwiches with condiments and diet coke, it’s much worse than genetically modified food.”

Another heated discussion centered around the need for higher education.

“We’re at a point where we quantity needs to turn into quality,” said Daria Kozlova, ITMO University’s prorector for International Development. “At our university, we’re very selective about admissions. We understand that our education is for a select group of specialists. My position is that higher education is not for everyone. Another question is what to do for those who can’t get it. Right now there’re no alternatives.”

It would take at least five years to improve the quality and the demand for professional education at community college-level. It’s a challenge for the education system in Russia, and around the world.

The opposing view was presented by Mikhail Sokolov, professor of political science and sociology at the European University, who noted that higher education is more than lectures and studies. Interaction between students and instructors is very important, which makes it hard to completely replace traditional education with online.

“In college we oftentimes make our best friends,” he said. “Statistically, it’s also the best chance for meeting your spouse. Don’t miss it. It’s also somewhat of a timeout for trying out various types of work.”