Am I about to be shot down in flames again?

Several years ago I posted Dartington Hall School and thinking outside the Educational Box and earlier this week I post the following to the privaate school Facebook page abot the hazzards of thinking outside the box.

One thing Dartington taught me was that the establishment view was not always right.

But has it been a good idea to ask awkward questions? Or would I have had an easier life If I had forgotten what I learnt at Dartington and sheepishly gone along with the crowd? Now in my 80s I am about to stick my head over the parapet yet again …..

Is there a significant difference between the way human and animal brains work?

 

The following essay was written as a follow up to an article by Micheal Marshall quoted in the Futurelearn Course "Introducing Humanism"

"Ultimately, the human brain is capable of some remarkable achievements; it is also capable of a quite remarkable level of self deception. By questioning even the facts we want to be true, by striving to look for the bigger picture, and by making use of methods like tests and trials to remove as much of our bias and motivated reasoning as we can, we can find out what’s really going on. "

Michael Marshall

So let us question a deeply held belief and see where the questioning leads.

 

Surely everyone knows that we are more intelligent than animals. Universities all round the world have scientists studying different aspects of the human brain with more and more powerful tools to try and find out what it is - perhaps a very unusual gene - which is the source of our great intelligence. Even Michael Marshall seems to support the idea that there is something special when he says that "the human brain is capable of some remarkable achievements."

 

The Problem with Big Data based Machine Intelligence

I have rather neglected this blog recently, partly because of other distractions, including a stimulating FutureLearn course on the Hobbit (Home floresiensis), and partly because I am concentrating on writing up my ideas about the evolution of human intelligence. However I have just come across an article by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis entitled "Eight (No Nine!) Things wrong with Big Data" which is well worth reading.

The issue I have with the big data approach to machine intelligence is that it is tackling the problem in a very different way to the human brain,

If we think about the evolution of the brain it started very small and incrementally became bigger over millions of years. And for each animal, including humans, the brains start with knowing very nothing apart from some pre-programmed instincts and its knowledge increases incrementally through life. The economics of evolution involve optimising the use of resources to maximise survival which will set limits to the size of the brain and the amount of time spent learning. In effect small amounts of "data" is beautiful as long as there is enough to be cost effective in the battle for survival.

Big data applications involve using vast amounts of data which is already available in digital form, such as the case of the Google language translator which uses million of document texts in different languages (so the data collection cost per byte is extremely low) and applies powerful statistical processes of a kind which clearly are not inbuilt into the human brain.

Of course in many cases the big data approach is invaluable in that it can do things humans are not be capable of doing. The important thing to realise is that the techniques used in processing big data can tell us virtually nothing about how the human brain works.

 

We should not underestimate the Neanderthal Mind

Neanderthal "rock circles"

An article in Nature, reported on the BBC News Site, describe the discovery of circles of stalagmite fragments deep inside a French cave. they are dated to have been constructed about 175,000 years ago - long before Homo sapiens reached Europe - at a time when Neanderthals are known to have been in the area. We will probably never know what motivated the people who broke off and arranged these stalactite fragments  but it is clear that they had sufficient control of fire - for lighting - to travel more than 300 metres into the cave and were prepared to explore pitch-dark underground passages for a considerable distance and spend some time working there.

Are Artificial Intelligence programmes really so clever?

Lee Se-dol lost three games in a row
When he played against slick Alpha-Go
Well he won number four
But the program won more,
'Cause mere humans are really too slow.

Draughts was the first of the classic board games to succumb to the power of computers, then Chess, and now Go. So congratulations to all the people who have worked on the design of the Alpha-Go software and the computer on which it runs.