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> Rodney Brooks (approx.): No, human ingenuity is actually responsible for progress in AI. We can’t just solve problems by throwing more compute at them.

I find this amusing considering nature just kept throwing more time at the universe until humans emerged. That said, I don't think Brooks is wrong. I can't recall where in the lectures this is, but I remember Feynman going on a rant about how poorly designed the human eye was. Human ingenuity really is an essential piece of the puzzle, seeing as Nature, in and of itself, isn't very smart.




You kind of have to add an implicit "unless we want to use a computer the size of a planet and wait two billion years for the answer".


42?


I'm not saying that's why the Earth is here, but have you noticed that almost every new medical advance does something beneficial for mice?


Your comment about the human eye made me curious about its design flaws. While I could not find anything about what Feynman said, this might be of interest to some.

https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/01/12/the-poor-design...


We may not understand its logic, but that doesn't mean it's logic is beneath us. On a bad day for nature, it makes a two-headed cow. On a bad day for mankind's tech advancements, we get the means to wipe out all life on this planet. Seems mighty fucking counter-intuitive.


On a bad day for nature, it actually does kill off a significant chunk of all life on the planet: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/the-great-oxygenation-e...




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