Lessons from COVID-19: Efficiency vs Resilience

In both computer science and economics, efficiency is a cherished property. In computer science, the field of algorithms is almost solely focused on their efficiency. In economics, the main advantage of the free market is that it promises "economic efficiency". A major lesson from COVID-19 is that both fields have over-emphasized efficiency and under-emphasized resilience. I argue that resilience is a more important property than efficiency and discuss how the two fields can broaden their focus to make resilience a primary consideration. I will include a technical example, showing how we can shift the focus in formal methods from efficiency to resilience.

Moshe Y. Vardi