Ph.D.s, AI, and cephalopods are proliferating. More than 50,000 doctoral candidates recently finished their degrees and entered the workforce. The number of octopuses, according to marine biologists, has also increased. Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory scientists recently tested a 3.2-gram robot moth. According to a computer scientist in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, A.I. is a long way from human-like flexibility and learning. In Bruniquel Cave in France, archaeologists found a low stone ring, a kind of little underground Stonehenge, that Neandert(h)als built 175,000 years ago. Is there a connection? Let me think.
Let’s take cephalopods first. They can adapt, solve problems, and learn. They can even move stones to build a wall at the entrance to their hideouts. They can do this with a mental and physical flexibility that derives from not only a central knot of neurons, but also from neurons throughout their tentacles. They can even control their individual pincers, doing with them what humans do with an opposable thumb.
Second, our ancient relatives from the Neander Valley just west of Düsseldorf: More than 350 yards from the entrance to the cave in south France, Neandertals—let’s finally get rid of that “h”—used stalagmites they felled to make a low circle. There they were, living and building a structure in a naturally dark environment to which they had to have taken fire. So much for the old “dumb-as-a-Neandertal” theory. They had some smarts, at least as much as an octopus. They could arrange stones for a purpose. Well, maybe a bit smarter. By using fire to light a cave and by felling stalagmites to build not a nest-like structure that a solitary octopus can build from readily available materials, but rather a ring for some likely social purpose, they showed a high level of cooperative activity dependent upon flexible intelligence and physical dexterity.
Third robots: I love Gort. Remember the giant robot from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still? Not as chatty as C3PO, but definitely an imposing robot that was capable of restoring life to Michael Rennie’s Klaatu and, in the words of Klaatu, capable of destroying our planet, Gort foreshadowed the A.I. and physical power we seem to think robots will someday possess and that is partially achieved in military drones and self-driving cars. Because flying with flapping wings is difficult, Harvard’s flying robot moth is an important step toward inventing Gort and possibly a step toward duplicating the abilities of Neandertals and octopuses.
Fourth Ph.D.s: Like octopuses and Neandertals, doctoral students have the ability to adapt, plan, and construct. And one of the things they can construct is a robot moth with a wee bit of human-like, octopus-like, and Neandertal-like flexibility.
Cephalopods are “head-foot,” so described because their tentacles attach at their heads. Ph.D.s are usually above average in intelligence, but they sometimes put their foot in their head/mouth by pursuing and stating the obvious. Thus, we have an archaeologist at an American university quoted in an online article about cavehenge that it “provides strong evidence of the great antiquity of those elaborate structures and is an important contribution to a new understanding of the greater level of social complexities of Neanderthal—that “h” again—societies” and that “A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior.” No. Really?
You’re not an archaeologist with a doctorate, are you? I don’t want to offend the species. But given that a ten-year-old could walk a football field into a cave with a flashlight, see stalagmites lying in piles to make a low ring, wouldn’t the child think that someone arranged them thus, maybe something like stumps and benches for a boy scout campfire meeting? It’s the argument from design, and it’s one that we use everyday to discern levels of intelligence (Why else do we include pattern recognition and imitation in I.Q. tests?).
We are a long way off from A.I. as flexible as human intelligence, according to those in the know. Yet, one has to ask, are the so-designated “brightest of us,” really beyond mimicking by some future Gort or chatty C3PO when there is only a “conjecture” that Neandertals were capable of the obvious? How many of the 50,000 new Ph.D.s will devote their intelligence to proving the obvious or studying what will give us a few facts but little wisdom?
In English Social History (1942) George Macaulay Trevelyan wrote, “Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” I know what you are thinking: “Why am I bothering with what I am now reading?” Let me come to the point: We have obviously come a long way from just arranging stones in a circle since we can now make an artificial flying moth, but none of our advances in “intelligence and learning” seem to assure us of becoming wise. Thus, as reported in various watchdog reports, we devote our brains to discovering either the obvious or the useless. The online Daily Signal reports that the NIH Center for Alternative Medicine spent $387,000 to study the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits, and it also funded a study to see if mothers love dogs as much as they love kids (another $371,026). Not done yet; hang on. The NSF spent $331,000 to give “hangry” (hunger+ anger) couples a chance to stick up to 51 pins into dolls, demonstrating that a spouse “with low blood sugar was an angrier one,” sticking more pins into the dolls.
So, 175,000 years after Neandertals had learned to light a cave and millions of years after octopuses learned how to build a little wall in front of a shelter, we’ve arrived at a point of purposeful education that produces people who dream of intelligent robots superior to humans while stating the obvious and studying the useless. We might know how to study and how to construct, but we seem to be a long way from knowing what to study and what to construct.
Let’s take cephalopods first. They can adapt, solve problems, and learn. They can even move stones to build a wall at the entrance to their hideouts. They can do this with a mental and physical flexibility that derives from not only a central knot of neurons, but also from neurons throughout their tentacles. They can even control their individual pincers, doing with them what humans do with an opposable thumb.
Second, our ancient relatives from the Neander Valley just west of Düsseldorf: More than 350 yards from the entrance to the cave in south France, Neandertals—let’s finally get rid of that “h”—used stalagmites they felled to make a low circle. There they were, living and building a structure in a naturally dark environment to which they had to have taken fire. So much for the old “dumb-as-a-Neandertal” theory. They had some smarts, at least as much as an octopus. They could arrange stones for a purpose. Well, maybe a bit smarter. By using fire to light a cave and by felling stalagmites to build not a nest-like structure that a solitary octopus can build from readily available materials, but rather a ring for some likely social purpose, they showed a high level of cooperative activity dependent upon flexible intelligence and physical dexterity.
Third robots: I love Gort. Remember the giant robot from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still? Not as chatty as C3PO, but definitely an imposing robot that was capable of restoring life to Michael Rennie’s Klaatu and, in the words of Klaatu, capable of destroying our planet, Gort foreshadowed the A.I. and physical power we seem to think robots will someday possess and that is partially achieved in military drones and self-driving cars. Because flying with flapping wings is difficult, Harvard’s flying robot moth is an important step toward inventing Gort and possibly a step toward duplicating the abilities of Neandertals and octopuses.
Fourth Ph.D.s: Like octopuses and Neandertals, doctoral students have the ability to adapt, plan, and construct. And one of the things they can construct is a robot moth with a wee bit of human-like, octopus-like, and Neandertal-like flexibility.
Cephalopods are “head-foot,” so described because their tentacles attach at their heads. Ph.D.s are usually above average in intelligence, but they sometimes put their foot in their head/mouth by pursuing and stating the obvious. Thus, we have an archaeologist at an American university quoted in an online article about cavehenge that it “provides strong evidence of the great antiquity of those elaborate structures and is an important contribution to a new understanding of the greater level of social complexities of Neanderthal—that “h” again—societies” and that “A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behavior.” No. Really?
You’re not an archaeologist with a doctorate, are you? I don’t want to offend the species. But given that a ten-year-old could walk a football field into a cave with a flashlight, see stalagmites lying in piles to make a low ring, wouldn’t the child think that someone arranged them thus, maybe something like stumps and benches for a boy scout campfire meeting? It’s the argument from design, and it’s one that we use everyday to discern levels of intelligence (Why else do we include pattern recognition and imitation in I.Q. tests?).
We are a long way off from A.I. as flexible as human intelligence, according to those in the know. Yet, one has to ask, are the so-designated “brightest of us,” really beyond mimicking by some future Gort or chatty C3PO when there is only a “conjecture” that Neandertals were capable of the obvious? How many of the 50,000 new Ph.D.s will devote their intelligence to proving the obvious or studying what will give us a few facts but little wisdom?
In English Social History (1942) George Macaulay Trevelyan wrote, “Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” I know what you are thinking: “Why am I bothering with what I am now reading?” Let me come to the point: We have obviously come a long way from just arranging stones in a circle since we can now make an artificial flying moth, but none of our advances in “intelligence and learning” seem to assure us of becoming wise. Thus, as reported in various watchdog reports, we devote our brains to discovering either the obvious or the useless. The online Daily Signal reports that the NIH Center for Alternative Medicine spent $387,000 to study the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits, and it also funded a study to see if mothers love dogs as much as they love kids (another $371,026). Not done yet; hang on. The NSF spent $331,000 to give “hangry” (hunger+ anger) couples a chance to stick up to 51 pins into dolls, demonstrating that a spouse “with low blood sugar was an angrier one,” sticking more pins into the dolls.
So, 175,000 years after Neandertals had learned to light a cave and millions of years after octopuses learned how to build a little wall in front of a shelter, we’ve arrived at a point of purposeful education that produces people who dream of intelligent robots superior to humans while stating the obvious and studying the useless. We might know how to study and how to construct, but we seem to be a long way from knowing what to study and what to construct.
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