

The Feeling of Power - dedalus
http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html

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endgame
A fine story. I've read it before, but it was good to read it again. If I were
a school maths teacher, I'd love to give it to a class for a discussion.

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S4M
Thanks for sharing that story. I read a lot of stories from Asimov before, but
I didn't know that one. What I don't get, though, is that the people in the
future see a benefit in having humans doing the computations that are made by
the computers. It sure makes sens for the humans to gain as much understanding
as they can of the computers, but multiplications are much faster done by
computers. I am missing something here?

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altharaz
I think it's not just about time. Computers are way faster than humans for
multiplications and elementary arithmetic, but it doesn't "think". Computers
are just doing some calculus, with less information on their environment than
we get with our human brain. Computed missile guidance will in most cases fail
if its target fires the right countermeasure, when a human guiding the missile
would more likely avoid it and reach the goal.

Also, I do think that basic understanding of mathematics seriously enhances
human intuition, which then helps develop better strategy.

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S4M
For the problem you describe - computer missile guidance - I could imagine a
program that analyzes when the missile reaches its target and when it doesn't
as a function of some external parameters (weather, temperature, obstacles,
etc.). It could detect when the target fires a counter measure (e.g a counter
missile) and act accordingly: by doing some tweaks on the missile trajectory
and the number of missiles fired at the same time, an ML algorithm could learn
how to avoid various counter measures...

So, while it would obviously benefit to have some human brains overseeing the
process, such a program could run almost autonomously most of the time. So we
let the computer do the "ground work" while we focus on "high level tasks".
Today the ground work is the basic calculations, tomorrow it will be part of
what is done by humans today, such as adapting the trajectory of a missile as
I just described above, the point is that the computing power should allow
humans to focus on higher level tasks.

So I don't see how the backward movement described by Asimov can help with
anything. Did he just want to warn the mankind against forgetting how
calculation works?

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altharaz
While I agree that a program could be made to build sort of counter-
countermeasure, I think that we are still not conscious of all the information
we get from our environment thanks to our brain. And as we don't have this
knowledge, we can't give it to our products, like this program.

Now, let's say that we have such a program, able to reach its target most of
the time. In that case, people would still have to focus on higher level tasks
as you said, like global offensive strategy. Even for this task, I think that
a spirit forged with mathematics will certainly be more efficient, with better
logics and intuition. But my opinion might be influenced by the fact that in
France, our best military schools do have high maths expectations for the
entry exam.

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S4M
Well, the example of AI applied to ballistic is a bit particular as the
environment - the place you are trying to bomb - will adapt to what you are
doing, and thus some human intervention will always be needed, but for a more
standard problem where the environment is not adaptive, say, the exploration
of an unknown region, I guess an AI could be left all by itself to do some
specific tasks. I think it's more relevant in the context of space exploration
where sending humans is both more expensive and very risky (note: I have no
idea if Curiosity is controlled by an AI or not).

Off topic: I'm French as well, and yeah, Polytechnique has a high level of
expectation in maths.

