animals and machines finalise
This commit is contained in:
parent
e67cee9f10
commit
44641763c9
@ -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}
|
||||
}
|
||||
|
@ -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!
|
||||
|
||||
<iframe class="centered" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JyqY64ovjfY" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
|
||||
|
||||
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 %}
|
||||
|
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user