3 ms·

At that point, the toddler's still run years of self-reinforced learning (as well as learning supported by parents, and observing other humans solving the probl

At that point, the toddler's still run years of self-reinforced learning (as well as learning supported by parents, and observing other humans solving the problem) on controlling their muscles... and again, think of the computational power expended over that time (by a computational approach that's been highly-optimised over millions of years of trial-and-error recursive descent style). Our intellect and capabilities are the result of a truly vast amount of computation in the grand scheme of things. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that Machine Learning is as generally capable as animals/humans, and I don't entirely disagree with the OP (i.e. I don't know if our current approach has a chance of scaling to human-level capabilities). I just don't think computation-wise it compares that badly to animals, considering that it's the result of a few decades of work, largely on repurposed silicon

cgio 3y ago
Human is not the most efficient learner for walking. See other animals, e.g. deer or elephant, that walk straight after being born. Relevant since the discussion is not about human learning but animal learning in nature.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Isn't that just biped vs quadruped difference in skill required to walk?
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Nope, puppies are walking within the first month of their life, a stage where human babies have barely any voluntary limb control and no apparent desire to move. The puppies are benefitting from a different type of "learning" process of course, in having genetic instincts tuned by many generations of ancestors who had good enough genetic wiring of motor capabilities and instincts sufficiently well attuned to their environments to survive. Humans have weaker priors and reach physical and mental maturity much more slowly but ultimately achieve greater mastery of their environment by learning it from first principles or communication with other humans (there may be a tradeoff, and of course humans are so good at protecting their young over years of infancy the early instincts aren't that important to retain)
- nine_k 3y ago
  It's not just learning abilities. Human babies are born at a stage that would be considered premature for most mammals. Because of the limitations on the size of the head, they can't afford to develop enough in utero, like deer or even dolphins can.
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> Our intellect and capabilities are the result of a truly vast amount of computation in the grand scheme of things. This is an interesting paradox in machine learning: the data that people use to (ostensibly!) simulate the human mind is simultaneously way too much, and not nearly enough. It's way too much in that humans can, e.g., learn to generate and recognise natural language without having to train on the entire World Wide Web of a corpus. And it's not nearly enough because humans can do that only after billions of years of evolution, which amount to training on all the data in the real world, not a mere few petabytes of data on the internet [1]. This paradox has to be resolved (i.e. understood) before we can really compare humans minds to artificial systems. Unfortunately, I don't see anybody trying. In machine learning so far people are happy to just plug in the data and turn the crank- something will come out eventually. ______________ [1] Source: https://archive.li/EY9ak https://archive.li/EY9ak

cgio 3y ago

Human is not the most efficient learner for walking. See other animals, e.g. deer or elephant, that walk straight after being born. Relevant since the discussion is not about human learning but animal learning in nature.

jimbokun 3y ago
Isn't that just biped vs quadruped difference in skill required to walk?
- notahacker 3y ago
  Nope, puppies are walking within the first month of their life, a stage where human babies have barely any voluntary limb control and no apparent desire to move. The puppies are benefitting from a different type of "learning" process of course, in having genetic instincts tuned by many generations of ancestors who had good enough genetic wiring of motor capabilities and instincts sufficiently well attuned to their environments to survive. Humans have weaker priors and reach physical and mental maturity much more slowly but ultimately achieve greater mastery of their environment by learning it from first principles or communication with other humans (there may be a tradeoff, and of course humans are so good at protecting their young over years of infancy the early instincts aren't that important to retain)
nine_k 3y ago
It's not just learning abilities. Human babies are born at a stage that would be considered premature for most mammals. Because of the limitations on the size of the head, they can't afford to develop enough in utero, like deer or even dolphins can.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> Our intellect and capabilities are the result of a truly vast amount of computation in the grand scheme of things. This is an interesting paradox in machine learning: the data that people use to (ostensibly!) simulate the human mind is simultaneously way too much, and not nearly enough. It's way too much in that humans can, e.g., learn to generate and recognise natural language without having to train on the entire World Wide Web of a corpus. And it's not nearly enough because humans can do that only after billions of years of evolution, which amount to training on all the data in the real world, not a mere few petabytes of data on the internet [1]. This paradox has to be resolved (i.e. understood) before we can really compare humans minds to artificial systems. Unfortunately, I don't see anybody trying. In machine learning so far people are happy to just plug in the data and turn the crank- something will come out eventually. ______________ [1] Source: https://archive.li/EY9ak https://archive.li/EY9ak