4 ms·

> In the one corner: Human, all of 175 pounds of extremely well trained runner. And in the other corner, a Formula 1 racecar with a remote control running down

> In the one corner: Human, all of 175 pounds of extremely well trained runner. And in the other corner, a Formula 1 racecar with a remote control running down a straight track. > > Nonsense, you’d say, that’s not a fair comparison No, I (and I think most sensible people) would say that's pointless – we know who's going to win. If you have a sufficiently smooth surface or it's worth creating one, cars are way better at their specific task than humans are. Everybody knows that and nobody uses humans for transportation or walks when they care about getting there fast. Why is everybody so scared that computers might now “be better” than humans?

visarga 11y ago
Because humans tend to identify with those traits that are still superior to computers.
andrepd 11y ago
Because they aren't. Not yet at least. They probably will be someday, but not for a long time.
- chronial 11y ago
  No, the correct question is “better at what”? There are tons of tasks at which humans don't stand a chance against computers.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    To say they are categorically better implies better at all things. Now a computer eclipses any human in arithmetic, memorization, etc, but even thousands of cores cannot make it do simple things even toddlers can do.
    - chronial 11y ago
      Nobody said “categorically”.
czinck 11y ago
On top of that, when trains (and probably cars too) were first introduced, there were races between trains and horses to see which was faster. Nowadays that's pointless for anything other than short distances, but early on it was a good measure of the technology, even if there are "obvious" advantages towards the train/car/AlphaGo.
jacquesm 11y ago
I'm not scared at all. I'm just pointing out that there is another hurdle that would be a major achievement to cross, without belittling at all what it took to achieve this victory. It is one of the most interesting results for many years simply because almost all the experts agreed this was at least a decade away.
- chillacy 11y ago
  > without belittling at all what it took to achieve this victory That's not really what it comes across as. Most posts like that reek of moving the goalpost. Also the efficiency goalpost is probably the easier problem. Advancement in processor designs, microarchitecture, and basic code optimization will get us there, not necessarily changing the techniques of AlphaGo. * 60 years ago ENIAC was room-sized and slow, now salesmen hand out branded solar calculators for free * As the article mentioned, deepblue was a massive computer with custom hardware, now your <1W phone can run stockfish. The achievement wasn't by the chess team, it was by Intel, ARM, compiler developers, etc.

visarga 11y ago

Because humans tend to identify with those traits that are still superior to computers.

andrepd 11y ago

Because they aren't. Not yet at least. They probably will be someday, but not for a long time.

chronial 11y ago
No, the correct question is “better at what”? There are tons of tasks at which humans don't stand a chance against computers.
- andrepd 11y ago
  To say they are categorically better implies better at all things. Now a computer eclipses any human in arithmetic, memorization, etc, but even thousands of cores cannot make it do simple things even toddlers can do.
  - chronial 11y ago
    Nobody said “categorically”.

czinck 11y ago

On top of that, when trains (and probably cars too) were first introduced, there were races between trains and horses to see which was faster. Nowadays that's pointless for anything other than short distances, but early on it was a good measure of the technology, even if there are "obvious" advantages towards the train/car/AlphaGo.

jacquesm 11y ago

I'm not scared at all. I'm just pointing out that there is another hurdle that would be a major achievement to cross, without belittling at all what it took to achieve this victory. It is one of the most interesting results for many years simply because almost all the experts agreed this was at least a decade away.

chillacy 11y ago
> without belittling at all what it took to achieve this victory That's not really what it comes across as. Most posts like that reek of moving the goalpost. Also the efficiency goalpost is probably the easier problem. Advancement in processor designs, microarchitecture, and basic code optimization will get us there, not necessarily changing the techniques of AlphaGo. * 60 years ago ENIAC was room-sized and slow, now salesmen hand out branded solar calculators for free * As the article mentioned, deepblue was a massive computer with custom hardware, now your <1W phone can run stockfish. The achievement wasn't by the chess team, it was by Intel, ARM, compiler developers, etc.