Comment by mananaysiempre
4 days ago
Actual post instead of ad-decorated screnshot: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881418225852441 (thread continued in https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881419368778558 and https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881420636881657).
Fair points, but the reason everyone is amazed is that five years ago this was entirely impossible for computers irrespective of the competition format or rules.
It’s as-if we had learned whale song, and then within two years a whale had won a Nobel prize for their research in high pressure aquatic environments. You’d similarly get naysayers debating the finer points of what special advantage whales may have in that particular field, neglecting the stunned shock of the general population — “Whales are publishing research papers now!? Award winning papers at that!?”
And it’s very impressive that whales can write papers.
A computer system that can perform these tasks that were unthinkably complex a few years ago is quite impressive. That is a big win, and it can be celebrated. They don’t need to be celebrated as a “gold medalist” if they didn’t perform according to the same criteria as a gold-medalist.
The same argument works in the reverse: the computer was not given 18 years of calendar time to study. It doesn’t have the benefit of a meat brain with a billion years of evolution optimising it for efficient thought. Etc…
That the architecture of the machine mind is different to ours is the point.
If it was identical then nobody would be excited! That’s a high school student equipped with a biological brain.
That the computer used silicon, that it used parallel agents, that it used whatever it has in its programming is irrelevant except in the sense that these very differences make the achievement more amazing — not less.
Win for whom?