Turing

Sense memory is such an interesting thing. As I sit on the couch in my front room (I say THE couch because we took it from our friends house we were staying in over summer so it's not really ours) watching, or rather listening, to Eurotrip on the TV I am instantaneously transported to the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, sitting in the den of the house I lived in for 11 years, with my best friend. What is truly amazing about sense memory is every song that plays in the movie, like Be My Girl by JET, brings a scent to my mind, an atmosphere, I can feel the chunky blue floor pillows I always sat on, and the rough, coarse tan carpet on my ankles, because I sat Indian style. Our brain is so mysterious...

What is even more mysterious about our brain is that we have been studying it for close to 100 years, if not longer (properly, that is. People were curious and had theories long before that), and today we are only a few steps ahead of where we were in 1923. Those few steps are very large of course, but the simple matter of fact is that a big, meaty muscle weighing approximately 8 pounds that looks a little like a sponge, or ground turkey in a package, controls everything and anything we do. Emotions, actions, reactions, memory, etc. That is all controlled my neurons firing through synapses. Electrical pulses that keep us alive. WE ARE RUN BY ELECTRICITY! We are just like any television, radio or microwave in the world today. We are run by electrical impulses. How crazy is that?

Just to boggle the big muscle even more, in the modern world of technology, we have been trying to build a robot with the equivalency of our intelligence. Now to define intelligence we should say that it is the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in gasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc. (I can't take credit for that definition, I stole it from dictionary.com.) Seems easy enough, right? Well...

Do you remember learning how to tie your shoe? Or ride a bike? Or even multiplication for the first time? Situational factors play a big part in our own 'intelligence.' These robots that scientists and mechanical engineers are trying desperately to build don't have the intelligence, or capacity for learning, situational factors. They can play chess, because they can learn the rules and look at all the possible moves in advance faster than we can say check mate, BUT if you ask them what they want for dinner they wouldn't know what to say. Isn't that AMAZING!? There is a test that they put 'robots' through called the Turing test where they give the robots an image, or the course is actually set in front of them, and they must find a path through a crowded forest. Sound simple, right? Right. Most 'robots' can find a path easily because they can recognize a clearing. Here's the kicker though. With a few clouds added to the picture, causing shade, or some other kind of destruction of view, the robots are fucked. They can't tell which way is left or right. Want to know why? SITUATIONAL, INSTANTANEOUS THINKING! We have it, because we can quite literally think on the balls of our feet. 'Robots' are programmed to have instantaneous thinking. We already have it hardwired in our personal electronic system. That same electronic system that we only know 30% about. Roughly.

Whoa.


Have a lovely, mind blown Friday!

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