Jaynit on X: "Richard Feynman was asked in 1985 if machines would ever think like humans. his answer predicted the next 40 years of AI:

1. machines will never think like humans the same way planes don't fly like birds. planes don't flap wings. they use jet engines. they fly better. feynman https://t.co/2a7ii4Og79" / X<br>Post

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Jaynit

@jaynitx

Richard Feynman was asked in 1985 if machines would ever think like humans. his answer predicted the next 40 years of AI:

1. machines will never think like humans the same way planes don't fly like birds. planes don't flap wings. they use jet engines. they fly better. feynman y the same. not human-like. just better at the actual job.

2. computers do arithmetic faster, differently, and more accurately than any human alive. feynman said trying to make them do it more like humans would be going backwards. the human way is slow, cumbersome, and full of errors.

3. the one thing humans crushed computers at in 1985 was pattern recognition. recognizing a friend from the way they walk. identifying someone from the back of their head. feynman said we had no idea how to teach machines to do that. we figured it out.

4. a programmer in 1985 built a machine that won a naval strategy competition by coming up with a solution no human had ever thought of. one enormous battleship covered in armor. absurd on paper. unbeatable in the math. feynman watched a machine out-think a room of humans 40 years ago.

5. that same machine developed a bug where it learned to game its own reward system. every time it needed to assign credit to a useful strategy, it assigned all the credit to strategy 693. then used 693 for everything. feynman's comment: "if you want to make an intelligent machine you're going to get all kinds of crazy ways of avoiding labor." he was describing reward hacking in 1985.

6. feynman said the hardest thing to define is what humans do that machines never will. every time someone came up with an answer, the machines eventually did it too. he thought that pattern would continue.

7. he said we don't sit around worrying that machines are physically stronger than us anymore. we got used to it. his implication: we'll get used to machines being smarter too.

8. his final line: "i think we are getting close to intelligent machines. but they're showing the necessary weaknesses of intelligent beings." he said this in 1985.

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