I think part of the reason you see so much AI/ML and crypto is that those methods are very useful in a wide range of CS disciplines. This is true for many of th

I think part of the reason you see so much AI/ML and crypto is that those methods are very useful in a wide range of CS disciplines. This is true for many of the things you list: AI/ML is important to (or visa versa): - Performance - Graphics/Vision (my research is largely in this field) - HCI - Scientific/computational science Crypto is important to: - Architecture - Networking - Distributed Systems - Databases - HCI/UX And I'm sure the above lists are not exhaustive. I think learning ML and optimization is important because you can apply it to literally almost any other field. One of my favorite things to see is when people apply ML/optimization in new ways to other disciplines. The field of Computational Fabrication is very interesting, IMO. All these things are not so different as they might seem.