From 44641763c9646abe804d4002da9780fe39bdd3df Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mahdi Dibaiee Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2022 15:58:07 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] animals and machines finalise --- _bibliography/references.bib | 14 ++++++ _posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md | 54 +++++++++++++++++++++-- 2 files changed, 65 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/_bibliography/references.bib b/_bibliography/references.bib index 151aa50..70e0751 100644 --- a/_bibliography/references.bib +++ b/_bibliography/references.bib @@ -519,3 +519,17 @@ year={2012}, url="http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/khan1/" } + +@article{hummingbird, + title={What Happens When You Put a Hummingbird in a Wind Tunnel?}, + author={Sadiq, Sheraz}, + year={2015}, + url="https://www.kqed.org/science/28759/what-happens-when-you-put-a-hummingbird-in-a-wind-tunnel" +} + +@article{rotman2020we, + title={We’re not prepared for the end of Moore’s Law}, + author={Rotman, David}, + journal={MIT Technology Review}, + year={2020} +} diff --git a/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md b/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md index 40fd3a4..28109e4 100644 --- a/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md +++ b/_posts/2022-11-15-animals-and-machines.md @@ -1,11 +1,10 @@ --- layout: post -title: "Animals and Machines: A Misled Comparison" +title: "On Efficiency of Animals and Machines" subtitle: "I find comparing animals and machines absurd" date: 2022-11-13 00:00:00 permalink: animals-and-machines/ categories: personal, science -published: false math: true author: Mahdi --- @@ -98,10 +97,59 @@ a good human artist, and it sure is not as efficient as a human. I think to say AI is smarter than humans in any subject, must take into account the efficiency of the system as well. +Moreover, Stable Diffusion is only capable of doing one thing, a very narrow and +focused task: given text, output images. I'm not dismissing the complexity of +this task, but it is still a narrow task. Every being's world lends it with +innumerable affordances, and an animal surviving in the world has to be able to solve +a lot more problems, and yet, the animal is an order of magnitude more efficient +at using its faculties to survive. Stable Diffusion focuses on one task, and is +extremely energy-inefficient at solving that. + ## Hummingbird My favourite example when it comes to comparing animals and machines, is the tiny hummingbird, which I think is more impressive than any machine made by -humans, let me explain! +humans. + +Hummingbirds can range from as small as 5 centimeters weighing 2 grams up to 23 +centimeters and weighing 18 - 24 grams. They can flap their wings 12 times per +second in larger species and around 80 times per second in smaller species. +Some hummingbirds can fly up to 54 kilometers per hour in wind tunnels! + +Now these tiny little birds are experts at hovering in the air, and keeping +their long beaks stable while sucking nectar from flowers, and when I say +expert, I mean it! Look at this video of a hummingbird keeping itself stable +while being blown with a 32km/h wind, and I remind you, the +bird itself weighs only a few grams, but can hold itself stable against such +wind! + + + +How efficient are hummingbirds? In a sense, they actually have the highest +metabolism of any warm-blooded animal, so they end up consuming their own body +weight in nectar every single day {% cite hummingbird %}, but on the other hand, +if we consider human-made machines, can we build any kind of machine with our +current understanding and technology that weighs only a few grams, can hold +itself stable in winds as fast as 32km/h, mates with its own species to produce +offsprings, and only consumes a few grams of flower nectar per day? I'm still +over-simplifying the hummingbird by naming a few actions it takes, but in +reality of course, the animal is much more complex and does a lot more than +this. + +# Conclusion + +I think comparing such marvels of efficiency with machines is +absurd. We don't come close to making something as efficient and intelligent as +animals with such complexity, and our _intelligent_ tools are only intelligent in a narrow manner, all the while +consuming energy that could feed an animal for _years_ to do what they do. + +Our current approach of computation does not seem to lend itself +to such order-of-magnitude efficiency contrast. Moore's Law does not apply +anymore {% cite rotman2020we %} and I don't see us improving CPU efficiency in a +significant manner that brings us closer to biological efficiency of animal +cognition without a breakthrough in the underlying technology and model we use +for computation and cognition. + +# References {% bibliography --cited %}