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> Except the if you ran a digital sundial in reverse it would only recognize one particular image of a number. Only because the sundials are purpose-built for

by ebg13 7y ago

> Except the if you ran a digital sundial in reverse it would only recognize one particular image of a number. Only because the sundials are purpose-built for producing clear digits. This would produce blurry messes that, if you squint hard, would look a bit more like one digit than like the others. But the principle doesn't appear to be different. This doesn't "recognize" anything. It's just a complex waveguide. You can see it in their ray path diagrams.

knolax 7y ago
> This doesn't "recognize" anything. It's just a complex waveguide. You can see it in their ray path diagrams. I don't see how your first and second statements are mutually exclusive.
- ebg13 7y ago
  Well, this plate doesn't choose which output is the correct one. Something else has to look and decide which number-correspondent-band is the maximal/correct one. But I don't want to argue that specific distinction. If you want to call the waveguide a recognizer, I'm ok with you doing that. The whole presentation of this article is very "woo". They say bullshit like "the glass learned to bend the light". This is clearly stupid and false. The system DESIGNING the glass learned how to construct the glass such that the light bended appropriately. The glass hasn't learned shit.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    Picking which of the 10 bands is the brightest has got to be trivial, so much more so than directly recognising eg. '4', so it does seem to do what it says. > The system DESIGNING the glass learned how to construct the glass such that the light bended appropriately With a bit of rephrasing you could say exactly the same about a neural network surely. The learning was embodied in the glass, so depending on definitions, the glass was 'taught' something. It 'learnt' something. I kind of see what you're saying, but it does seem to be discounting something actually interesting and new (in my experience).
craftinator 7y ago
'This doesn't "recognize" anything. It's just a complex waveguide. You can see it in their ray path diagrams.' Which is how classifiers work. Which is also how our brains work. The only real difference is the medium. Recognition is a reliable ability to convolute a large form into a very small amount of information, distinguishable between forms. When I look at a hand drawn "8", I don't store all the curves I see as the number 8, I have an abstraction of the number in my head, and I signal recognition by activating that abstraction, very similarly to how this glass computer functions. How else does one recognize something?

by ebg13 7y ago

knolax 7y ago

> This doesn't "recognize" anything. It's just a complex waveguide. You can see it in their ray path diagrams. I don't see how your first and second statements are mutually exclusive.

ebg13 7y ago
Well, this plate doesn't choose which output is the correct one. Something else has to look and decide which number-correspondent-band is the maximal/correct one. But I don't want to argue that specific distinction. If you want to call the waveguide a recognizer, I'm ok with you doing that. The whole presentation of this article is very "woo". They say bullshit like "the glass learned to bend the light". This is clearly stupid and false. The system DESIGNING the glass learned how to construct the glass such that the light bended appropriately. The glass hasn't learned shit.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Picking which of the 10 bands is the brightest has got to be trivial, so much more so than directly recognising eg. '4', so it does seem to do what it says. > The system DESIGNING the glass learned how to construct the glass such that the light bended appropriately With a bit of rephrasing you could say exactly the same about a neural network surely. The learning was embodied in the glass, so depending on definitions, the glass was 'taught' something. It 'learnt' something. I kind of see what you're saying, but it does seem to be discounting something actually interesting and new (in my experience).

craftinator 7y ago

'This doesn't "recognize" anything. It's just a complex waveguide. You can see it in their ray path diagrams.' Which is how classifiers work. Which is also how our brains work. The only real difference is the medium. Recognition is a reliable ability to convolute a large form into a very small amount of information, distinguishable between forms. When I look at a hand drawn "8", I don't store all the curves I see as the number 8, I have an abstraction of the number in my head, and I signal recognition by activating that abstraction, very similarly to how this glass computer functions. How else does one recognize something?