[FRIAM] AI

[Prof David West]

> So even though a robot might never replicate the full sensory richness or biochemical subtlety of the human body, it may not need to....Think of calculators: they’re completely clueless about context, but they’ll beat any of us in a mental arithmetic race, every time.
even a well-handled abacus or slip-stick can do this of course, but yes

Special case contra-examples. When I was consulting in India, several of the software developers were proponents of "Vedic Math" procedures derived from Vedic Scripture. Demonstrated ability to add columns of 10+digit numbers spoken to them. Correct results much faster than if you had to manually enter them into a calculator.

And Gauss "added the numbers from 1-100) in far less time than it would have required to enter them into calculator and press the + key.

davew


On Sat, Jun 21, 2025, at 4:17 PM, steve smith wrote:
> Pieter  wrote:
>> Just one thought to toss into the mix: humans didn’t evolve to do astrophysics, drive Ferraris, or detect sarcasm on Twitter....
> The human *genome* did not evolve *specifically* to do all these things, however at some point, our facility for symbolic language and abstraction *did* evolve to support and enhance those more fundamental  needs.  It is on top of that symbolic abstraction where *culture* began to evolve and this is where our ability to do astrophysics/ferraris/sarcasm emerges.   And it might be apt to notice that AI is much closer to driving ferraris, doing astrophysics and detecting (or generating) sarcasm that it is at being an effective hunter-gatherer on the tundra/savanna/jungle/boreal-forest.
>> Now, if we set out to design a robot to function in today’s environments — say, hospitals, homes, or corporate boardrooms — we’re working with a very different set of goals. ...
> If our goal is to replace *one more* set of skills or abilities, then it is correct that we don't "need all that".   It does seem that a hallmark of modern human activity (neolithic forward?) has been to replace ourselves, one feature at a time.   Lithics to replace (enhance) our teeth/claws, cooking to replace (enhance) our digestive abilities, animal husbandry to replace/enhance our brute-labor and translate low-grade photosynthesis to human-digestables (turning grass and leaves into milk, meat, eggs, blood).   Wheels and levers and sails and hulls and millstones and kilns and forges and hammers and anvils and looms and ... and rocket-ships and a dyson-sphere-of-computronium  all represent a scaffolding of escalating replacements for the things we did with our own biochemistry (from hair and nails to lymphocytes and neurons)...
>> So even though a robot might never replicate the full sensory richness or biochemical subtlety of the human body, it may not need to....Think of calculators: they’re completely clueless about context, but they’ll beat any of us in a mental arithmetic race, every time.
> even a well-handled abacus or slip-stick can do this of course, but yes
>> I wouldn’t bet on a human-equivalent robot appearing next year — but ten years? Maybe. Especially if we stop trying to replicate every biological quirk and instead design for function. And when I say “function,” I mean not just doing what a human can do, but doing what the job needs — which is often a very different thing.
> The point, I would claim is that we aspire (with AI, starting with Golems and Frankenstein's monster and enlightenment age humanoid mechanicals) to replace our "generalist" abilities.   Many domestic animals have been adopted/bred/trained to be "generalists" around a large portion of our needs, whether it be converting simple carbs into high grade fats/proteins for us, or hauling burdens, or even (think elephants) delicately manipulating things way to heavy for us.   Some even have diverged from direct, immediate response to our needs to more abstract needs we have (e.g.  show animals whose functional abilities might never be exercised outside of the training/show-rooms).
>> Take Demis Hassabis’ current project: trying to simulate a single biological cell to improve drug discovery. Sounds simple — it’s just one cell — but it’s turning out to be a mammoth challenge. Meanwhile, a useful robot doesn’t need even one biological cell. It just needs actuators, sensors, and some reasonably clever code. This illustrates a broader point: biological systems are complex because evolution took the long road. Engineering can often take a shortcut.
> And while I am very much a fan of engineering, I do believe Evolution to be more than "less efficient Engineering".   AI/ML has been an effort in *reverse-engineering* our greatest cognitive abilities, up until the recent generations of "model-less modeling" that in fact seems to be to try to reverse-engineer evolution (exemplified by genetic algorithms and neural nets and ???)
> 
>> 
>> So yes, the human body is a marvel — a product of billions of years of trial and error. But that doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient solution for every task. It’s just the one that happened to work well enough to keep our ancestors from being eaten.
>> 
>> After all, birds fly beautifully. But when we wanted to fly, we didn’t grow feathers. We built jets.
> In a certain sense yes, but not particularly in virtually every other sense?   I have had lucid dreams about flying since I was very young, spanning many forms from sailing/soaring to flapping, to pumping my arms as with a hydraulic jack to telekineticing, swinging from vines or spider-man-shot webs, and more recently to following stellar/planetary geodesics with my intention, spreading my electromagnetic pinfeathers in the solar/wind/magnetic fields of the sun/planets/moons/belts/rings/clouds.   But no jets... or any mechanical contrivance really...  even icarus/daedelus wings-o-wax...
> 
> <aviation tangent>
> 
>> While I have flown a (vintage) light plane, even through minor aerobatics, and ridden hundreds? of thousands of miles in commercial jets, none of it really matches the experiences I *aspire*/*imaginate* to have in those dreams...  I can't (until DaveW or maybe Glen turns me on to the right entheogen) project my spirit into the Ravens frolicing on the canyon edge or the bats echolocating their way through a flux of airborne foodstuffs.
>> 
>> But yes, Jets, hypersonics, space rockets, interplanetary bussard ramjets, ultra-lights, gyrocopters, etc.   They are marvels and each in their own way more "capable" than any given bird/species and there are probably unpiloted winged vehicles which will rival the Wandering Albatross reputed to spend 95% of their time in the air and expending order 2x their basal metabolic rate.   See Gossamer Condor/Albatross/Penguin and note that Aerodynamic Engineer on the first two projects, Peter LIssaman hung at SFx with us for a while?
>> 
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human-powered_aircraft
>>> 
>> How soon will we have a Lissaman/MacReady equivalent AI (throw in pedal-pusher Bryan Allen for good measure)?  Or leonardo DaV or Archimedes, or... ?   Can they exist/arise/emerge without the larger culture that spawned them?   Maybe we can identify to an AI their achievements and reverse engineer their solutions, but can we frame the context that lead them to pursue those challenges.
>> 
>> I *suspect* that if given the opportunity/motivation that suites of AI/ML agents might well develop minimalist human-scaled prosthetics so that I (my grandchildren) can literally have those experiences direct.   Some proprioception/motion-platform/haptics added to visual/auditory synthetic sensoria and even I might be soaring virtually over the surface of mars or through the braided rings of Saturn as-in-my dreams?
>> 
> </tangent>
> 
> And in the immortal *Tears in Rain* words of Roy Batty:
> 
>> **"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.*
>> Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
>> I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.*
>> 
>> **All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.**
>> 
>> **Time to die."**
>> 
> 
> 
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