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Of course, we're the product of an evolutionary history which results in such human "failure modes" being rare. If staring at a zebra made you hallucinate, you'
by QAPereo 9y ago
Of course, we're the product of an evolutionary history which results in such human "failure modes" being rare. If staring at a zebra made you hallucinate, you'd be unlikely to be the most successful member of your species, nor would your offspring thrive. So while we only tend to run into our obvious failing whens we do the unusual, computers fail at what we consider mundane.
- mikeash 9y agoThe other day I was walking out of my closet, turned, and nearly jumped out of my skin because some clothes hanging from the door briefly looked like a large man standing right next to me. I'm not sure that our failings only happen under unusual circumstances, but rather maybe we're just used to them and don't think about it much.
- QAPereo 9y agoThat's no failing, that's working as intended. It's far more beneficial for us (and more importantly, our successful ancestors) to be extremely wary of potential threats at the level of near-reflex. It's also important not to waste a bunch of energy running from phantoms. So you did something no computer today could; you had an instinctive reaction, which was then moderated by increasingly higher levels of reasoning. I'm guessing the whole process of panic->resolution took less than a few seconds. That's no failure mode.
- mikeash 9y agoJust because it evolved to a point that balances the tradeoffs doesn’t make it somehow not a failure. Humans can be fooled into seeing things completely different from what’s there, just like ANNs.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eru 9y agoOf course, our failure modes would be unusual to computers. Eg our short term memory is severely limited and imprecise.