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> all are based on our peculiarly effective

They are peculiarly effective only because of lack of comparison. Humans have been the most intelligent species on this planet for millennia, where no other species come even close. We don't know how ineffective those strategies are seen by a more advanced species. Well, until now.




This is a good point. I was coming from the point of view that we've had powerful computers for a while, and yet humans were still dominating them, at least until recently, in games like Go, poker, and many visual and language tasks.

Of course, the counterpoint could be that it's only the case because humans, with their laughable reasoning abilities, are the ones programming those computers.


It was not a good point.

AlphaGo can’t decide that it’s bored and go skydiving. Humans aren’t merely capable of playing Go. And when they do it, they can also pace around the table, and drink something, all at the same time, on a ridiculously low energy budget. Or they can decide never to learn Go in the first place but to master an equally difficult other discipline. They continuously decide what out of all of this to do at any given moment.

AlphaGo was built by humans, for a purpose selected by humans, out of algorithms designed by humans. It is not a more advanced species. It’s not even a general intelligence.

Your own original point was much better than the one made in response.




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