This is an excellent response! I’d also add that the things we can optimize for are very limited—for both flight and AI—by the current state of materials scien

This is an excellent response! I’d also add that the things we can optimize for are very limited—for both flight and AI—by the current state of materials science. Bird wing mechanics are incredibly complex, and we’re still learning how far that extends. This video[0] shows how the feathers are spread apart and turned to decrease drag on the upstroke, something that we probably couldn’t see before slow-motion video was invented. Even though we know now, we cannot (to my knowledge) create artificial feathers with the same properties as real ones, nor can we build the biomimicry required to make use of them. (Plus, nobody wants to be in a bouncing bird-wing body even for a short flight.) [0] https://youtu.be/4jKokxPRtck https://youtu.be/4jKokxPRtck