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> Another task, previously only conquered by evolution I'm pretty sure that Jeopardy performance as such has not been strongly selected for among the ancestors
by gjm11 16y ago
> Another task, previously only conquered by evolution
I'm pretty sure that Jeopardy performance as such has not been strongly selected for among the ancestors of present day H. sapiens.
(And the related things that may have been -- effective language use, good memory, etc. -- are not so obviously "conquered by algorithms written by humans" however well Watson does.)
- ugh 16y agoThat sentence was written for its poetic impact, not its accuracy, I think it’s nevertheless somewhat defensible. Humans were obviously never selected for playing Jeopardy and evolution didn’t in that sense “conquer” Jeopardy (like dinosaurs “conquering” flying) but evolution nevertheless produced humans which are very good at playing Jeopardy. (We know of nothing else in this universe that can even only understand the rules of Jeopardy. Except for human-built machines.) That we can build a machine which is just as good as we are at playing the game obviously doesn’t mean that this machine is as intelligent as humans, it’s nevertheless quite impressive.