🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Williams <williams@tiac.net> wrote:
>Your analysis is seriously flawed here.  The computer is not like a car.
>A car replaces physical work, a computer replaces mental work -- and the
>computer is replacing more mental work every year.  The user who doesn't
>care how their computer does what it does will end up being replaced by
>the computer.  Therefore I care very much what is going on inside my
>computer.  I want the computer to be my friend, not my owner, nor my
>replacement.

I think your definition of mental  work requires explanation. I don't consider
adding numbers mental work. I don't consider drawing a nice looking graph from
a column of numbers mental work. IMO, computer is a tool which lets me do more
of what I want to do in a shorter amount of time by doing the laborous work for
me. If I were an attorney, I don't need to know what is going on in the
computer to let it do a search on certain keywords. My job would be look at the
output and decide which ones are relevant to my case and then prepare a defense
accordingly. If you are saying that one day, someone will program a computer to
do just that, I want to remind you that 30 years ago Marvin Minsky said that by
now, computer would see and understand natural languages. It didn't happen and
it doesn't look like it is going to happen any time soon. In fact the  day
something like that will happen is moving further and further as our
understanding of how human brain works.

muzo

PS Marvin Minsky is a researcher  at MIT AI lab, FYI

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