Will machines never really think? Richard Feynman is considering the future of artificial intelligence (1985)

by Finn Patraic

When you buy through links on our site, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. However, this does not influence our evaluations.

Although his answer has been more and more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will really think that it has been around for some time. Richard Feynman was questioned about this 40 years ago, as evidenced The above conference clip. As his fans expected it, he approached the question of artificial intelligence with his characteristic incisiveness and humor – as well as his tendency to crop conversation into his own terms. If the question is whether the machines will never think like human beings, he says no; If the question is whether the machines will never be smarter than human beings, well, it depends on how you define intelligence.

Even today, there remains a very big big step so that any machine responds to our constant requests, such as the Feynman articula, for a better than human mastery of all imaginable tasks. And even when their skills beat humanity – as in, say, the field of arithmetic, that computers dominate by their very nature – they do not use their calculation apparatus in the same way as human beings use their brain.

Skills for your future. Online courses from $14.99." target="_blank" rel="sponsored noopener nofollow"> Udemy – Top courses 80 % off

Perhaps in theory, you can design a computer to add, subtract, multiply and divide roughly the same slow mode and subject to the errors that we tend to make, but why would you like? Better to focus on what humans can do better than machines, such as the type of model recognition necessary to recognize a single human face in different photographs. Or it was, in any case, something that humans could do better than machines.

The tables have turned, thanks to the automatic learning technologies that recently emerged; We are surely not far from the possibility of drawing a portrait, and with him, all the other photos of the same person never downloaded on the internet. The question of whether computers can discover new ideas and relationships in themselves send Feynman in a disquisition on the very nature of computers, how they do what they do and how their inhuman high power manners, when applied to problems based on reality, can lead to solutions as bizarre as they are effective. “I think we get closer to smart machines,” he says, “but they show the necessary weaknesses of intelligence.” Arthur C. Clarke Said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and perhaps any sufficiently intelligent machine seems a bit stupid.

Related content:

Skills for your future. Online courses from $14.99." target="_blank" rel="sponsored noopener nofollow"> Udemy – Top courses 80 % off

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicted the rise of artificial intelligence and the existential questions to which we would need to answer (1978)

Richard Feynman's life and work explored in three parts Freakomics Radio mini-series

Isaac Asimov describes how artificial intelligence will release humans and their creativity: look at his last major interview (1992)

Richard Feynman enthusiastically explains how to think as a physicist in his series Fun to imagine (1983)

Stephen Fry explains why artificial intelligence has a “70% risk of killing us all”

Richard Feynman creates a simple method to tell the science of pseudoscience (1966)

Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.