> thinking we can create "AGI" without first increasing our understanding of "wet" neural nets is the height of hubris
Already ~40 years ago I read in a popular science book that scientists had tried to apply genetic algorithms to finding a better nozzle for a given purpose (jet engine? I don't remember that). That was then done by prefabricating a number of ring-shaped metal parts the inside of which had different widths and different slopes; a stack of these could form a wide variety of shapes for the conduit. They started with an initial configuration, did a measurement, then threw the dice to determine what part should be changed; if the new measurement was better (according to their metric) than the preceding one, they kept it, otherwise reversed it. They did find a nozzle shape that was not only significantly better than any known configuration; it was also significantly weirder, seemingly completely ad-hoc.
There's no computers in this experiment, no intelligent design; people were only necessitated to procure the initial parts and setup, do the dice-throwing and so on; the design process proper was a very basic, randomized, mechanical procedure, no thinking required, no understanding necessary.
Already ~40 years ago I read in a popular science book that scientists had tried to apply genetic algorithms to finding a better nozzle for a given purpose (jet engine? I don't remember that). That was then done by prefabricating a number of ring-shaped metal parts the inside of which had different widths and different slopes; a stack of these could form a wide variety of shapes for the conduit. They started with an initial configuration, did a measurement, then threw the dice to determine what part should be changed; if the new measurement was better (according to their metric) than the preceding one, they kept it, otherwise reversed it. They did find a nozzle shape that was not only significantly better than any known configuration; it was also significantly weirder, seemingly completely ad-hoc.
There's no computers in this experiment, no intelligent design; people were only necessitated to procure the initial parts and setup, do the dice-throwing and so on; the design process proper was a very basic, randomized, mechanical procedure, no thinking required, no understanding necessary.