Showing posts with label flight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flight. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2010

A passing analogy between artificial flight and artificial intelligence

I thought this was pretty funny. There's those who say we could never create an artificial intelligence because even if we designed something that passes the ultimate Turing Test, how will we know it's not just a hollow shell that only mimics cognition? As an analogy, however, the same logic could be used by a bunch of birds talking about artificial flight:

"This is flight in the natural world, the product of millions of years of evolution, and not a phenomenon easily replicated. Current A.F. is limited to unpowered gliding; a technical marvel, but nowhere near the sophistication of a bird. Gliding simplifies our lives, and no bird (including myself) would discourage advancing this field, but it is a far cry from synthesizing the millions of cells within the wing alone to achieve Strong A.F. 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"