[FRIAM] AI

Sun Jun 22 22:10:30 EDT 2025

Didn't he know that the sum of the first n integers is n*(n+1)/2 ?

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Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Jun 22, 2025, 10:36 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> 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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