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That's the funny things about the article. Though it mocks the idea, in the end we can't create a machine that has the same functionality as birds. Of course, h

by bnralt 4y ago

That's the funny things about the article. Though it mocks the idea, in the end we can't create a machine that has the same functionality as birds. Of course, humans only use a sliver of that functionality for their own ends, but even then we still raise billions of birds for our own ends. Most people still find cats to be the best way to hunt vermin, insect the best way to pollinate plants, seeing eye dogs better guides than any robot, snails better at auto-cleaning fish tanks than any device, dogs better at tracking scents in public than any machine, etc.

scaramanga 4y ago
Dijkstra said the same thing. Why bother trying to make a computer think like a human? Why not make it do something better? I tend to agree. Or to borrow from Chomsky, why would we try to make a machine deadlift a box like a powerlifter when we can just make a fork-lift truck / front-end loader?
pas 4y ago
Well, function implies form in this universe to some degree. The more functions we want to put into a machine the more it's form is constrained. If we want something that does all what birds do .. we need to build a bird. That said we already have drones. We can add a charging station, an artificial beak, a speaker and it can do bird stuff pretty well :) What we suck at is building self-replicators. Cats are considered better vermin hunters than simple machines, like rat traps, because they have a lot of extra benefits of being household pets. (Which rat traps don't do well. Also usually dogs are used to hunt vermin. [I wanted to find that video where dogs hunt on the field as a tractor plows it, but only found this about minks :o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB1I7UixASY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB1I7UixASY ].) Fish tank cleaning is also a very specific problem. It's basically a niche. If we look at it as an engineering challenge it's a hard problem. Small space, hard to reach spaces, mostly mechanical work is needed (as fish tank life is very sensitive to water quality), etc. And there's also cost. It's very possible that if we were to spend a few billion dollars on the problem we could come up with a fish tank cleaner, but ... snails are provided by evolution for free.

by bnralt 4y ago

scaramanga 4y ago

Dijkstra said the same thing. Why bother trying to make a computer think like a human? Why not make it do something better? I tend to agree. Or to borrow from Chomsky, why would we try to make a machine deadlift a box like a powerlifter when we can just make a fork-lift truck / front-end loader?

pas 4y ago

Well, function implies form in this universe to some degree. The more functions we want to put into a machine the more it's form is constrained. If we want something that does all what birds do .. we need to build a bird. That said we already have drones. We can add a charging station, an artificial beak, a speaker and it can do bird stuff pretty well :) What we suck at is building self-replicators. Cats are considered better vermin hunters than simple machines, like rat traps, because they have a lot of extra benefits of being household pets. (Which rat traps don't do well. Also usually dogs are used to hunt vermin. [I wanted to find that video where dogs hunt on the field as a tractor plows it, but only found this about minks :o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB1I7UixASY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB1I7UixASY ].) Fish tank cleaning is also a very specific problem. It's basically a niche. If we look at it as an engineering challenge it's a hard problem. Small space, hard to reach spaces, mostly mechanical work is needed (as fish tank life is very sensitive to water quality), etc. And there's also cost. It's very possible that if we were to spend a few billion dollars on the problem we could come up with a fish tank cleaner, but ... snails are provided by evolution for free.