
Artificial Flight and Other Myths - dmoney
http://dresdencodak.com/2010/02/16/artificial-flight-and-other-myths-a-reasoned-examination-of-af-by-top-birds/
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mortenjorck
This is in a similar vein to an earlier essay by the same author:
<http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/2181/>

In the aforelinked one, he skeptically critiques the idea of evolution into
hominids from the perspective of a primate. It's an enjoyable read, if not
exactly the soundest case for a Kurzweilian singularity.

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jerf
Amusing, but as a serious argument it critically fails in that "Strong AF" is
measured by whether it fools a real bird into thinking it's a bird, and once
you are "birdy" you can't be "more real than real", but in the real world
everybody understands that passing a Turing Test is the _beginning_ of AI, not
the end. The Turing Test is a relatively unambiguous measurement of how
successful the AI is, and it will progress from there.

Yes, it's true that the Turing Test does force a bit of possibly-difficult
humanity onto the resulting AI, but all that probably boils down to is some
constant factor improvement on human intelligence (on some hypothetical
measure where we can quantify intelligence along a single dimension), with the
resulting slightly-superhuman-AI just "faking" being human. That would still
win, and I have a hard time imagining some sort of weird result where we have
radically superhuman AIs that just can't seem to convincingly fake being
human.

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abstractbill
_I have a hard time imagining some sort of weird result where we have
radically superhuman AIs that just can't seem to convincingly fake being
human._

I have a hard time imagining it too, but I see no good reason why that
_couldn't_ happen (which was the whole point of the article I think - our
current technology can _easily_ make many different things that can fly, but
we are still incapable of making something that really flies like a bird).

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bmunro
_which was the whole point of the article I think - our current technology can
easily make many different things that can fly, but we are still incapable of
making something that really flies like a bird_

I read it differently. The aim is to make something that can fly. But we, from
our position as birds, don't accept flying as anything other than bird-like
flying - with wings and feathers.

Leaving the analogy, I think the article is saying that humans generally don't
accept anything as artificial intelligence unless it exactly mimics a human,
or is indistinguishable from a human. Thus the attempts to work out exactly
how the brain (or wing) works and to replicate it.

In reality, AI research has progressed considerably - visual recognition,
autonomous navigation, question answering etc. But these are only 'gliding',
and are only leading towards 'other flight-like phenomena' such as bat and
insect flight. We don't accept them as parts of an artificial intelligence
because we think (rightly or wrongly) that there is something more to
intelligence than just a set of special algorithms and feed back loops.

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DannoHung
I thought it was a critique of people focusing on trying to create AI by
modeling human intelligence. But I think it's a dumb article because I am
reasonably sure that Avian aerodynamics undoubtedly inspired early
aeronautics.

If his criticism is just of the Turing Test instead, then I think he's a
simpering ninny.

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Groxx
_We may build a functioning, flapping wing, but what if the essence of flight
is deeper, hidden within the cells or elsewhere?_

Oh joy. One of these articles. And yes, I do think that sentence is indicative
of the whole article, though it's more instantly-recognizable-as-stupid than
most of it. The rest of the article takes a few seconds more.

Well, I guess we won't be "really" flying any time soon. I like my enhanced-
gliding just fine, thanks.

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Smirlouf
_Strong A.F., as it is defined by researchers, is any artificial flier that is
capable of passing the Tern Test (developed by A.F. pioneer Alan Tern), which
involves convincing an average bird that the artificial flier is in fact a
flying bird._

The same goes for this one... Lovely :-)

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ojbyrne
Mildy apropos, I was talking to an aeronautical engineer this weekend, who
dropped the phrase "You can make anything fly if you can make it go 200mph."

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philwelch
Evidently the speed constraint on very very fast cars doesn't come from making
them go faster, it comes from making them _not take off into flight_.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Peter Dumbreck in the Mercedes, Le Mans, 1999

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3rxq7U1mA> at about 33 secs.

Here's another: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M3NQeDzedk>

Yes, when cars go fast enough, keeping them on the ground is one of the
challenges.

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daeken
Silly article. Everyone knows you can't have strong AF without using _tern_
ary computers.

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Groxx
Oh wow, I just got that...

The pain... xD

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nomen
Does this mock _Computer Power and Human Reason_?

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teilo
Ah, Dresden Codak. I dropped him from my RSS a long time ago. Nice to catch up
with his latest work. He always makes me think.

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ugh
Not even an Airbus A380 would pass the Tern Test. So I guess we don’t have
Strong A.F. after all …

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rbanffy
Can you imagine what would it be to have an A380 flapping its wings?

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RiderOfGiraffes
These results are old because they're from the time I had a tour through the
aeronautical research laboratories in Melbourne, Australia. However,

The wings of a boeing 727 flex about 8 inches in each direction in normal
flight. In tests to destruction they were flexed repeatedly to nearly 8 feet
in each direction before they showed any visible signs of distress, finally
failing after 13 hours constant flexing at 8'4" in each direction.

I'm not suggesting I wouldn't be terrified in a major storm, but I felt a lot
safer in flight after that. Aircraft wings are amazingly flexible and robust.

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rbanffy
I know planes have flexible wings, but there is a good reason nature's largest
flying critter is no bigger than a toy plane.

An ornithopter the size of an A380 would be... interesting.

