An educator's view on artificial intelligence
Since 2002, I have been teaching in the further education sector and have seen the impact of new technologies. AI is the most disruptive so far (27 December, p 24).
I started to think about how these models learn, in the context of some well-established theories of learning. While large language models (LLMs) appear to be capable of higher-order cognitive skills, such as analysis, application of knowledge and evaluation, I question the depth of their “understanding”.
There has been much written around this problem, including the book The Neural Mind, which you reviewed. LLM intelligence is based purely on absorbing vast amounts of information and being able to extract complex patterns. However, unlike us, it can’t understand that information in the context of physical and emotional experience.
Until artificial neural networks can experience the world as we do, their intelligence will remain artificial, a mere simulation of human intelligence, albeit a very powerful and quite useful one.
The extraterrestrial potential of lichens
Your article “Lichens unleashed” paints a picture of lichens as complex symbiotic communities with the ability to survive in space and thus potentially undertake interplanetary travel (27 December, p 38). Has anyone considered they could, in fact, be intelligent and highly developed aliens 鈥� albeit on a microscopic scale 鈥� living peacefully on Earth?
How like humans to spot and explore the potential to enslave them for our own benefit!
Getting to the bottom of the simulation mystery (1)
Tim Rafferty’s claim that simulators would only have to “simulate our ability to observe the universe” is often called lazy evaluation, but it faces a number of hurdles (Letters, 3 January).
Objects cannot simply “pop” into existence: their current state requires a massive, recursive calculation of their entire history, effectively forcing a full-scale simulation. If the simulator didn’t do this, it would be obvious to us that we were living in a simulation.
Quantum mechanics also complicates things. Superposition requires tracking all possible states simultaneously, while entanglement demands global overhead. Rather than saving power, these quantum features are computationally more taxing than a fixed, classical reality, making “lazy” shortcuts scientifically improbable.
Getting to the bottom of the simulation mystery (2)
I enjoyed Tim Rafferty’s letter about simulation time. However, many simulations run to an end to see a result and then decisions are made based on that result, so it would make sense to run the simulation as fast as possible. This raises the question: do those of us in the simulation experience time at the normal rate, or do we see time at the accelerated rate of the simulation?
Getting to the bottom of the simulation mystery (3)
If we are indeed living in a simulation run by a “superior” being, one thought consoles me: they will themselves be having doubts regarding their own existence.
Sunshine satellite plan is a blast from the past
Your article “Satellites to provide sunshine on demand” reminded me of a similar proposal reported by 快猫短视频 in 1998. You kindly printed my letter at that time pointing out that many species of animal use the moon to determine the time to moult or spawn, or use it as a navigation aid when migrating, and these should be considered when deciding whether to allow such satellites (3 January, p 11).
Has Reflect Orbital solved these problems, or just not thought of them?
Schr枚dinger's cat can't be so easily simplified
I feel compelled to point out the error in David Longhurst’s simplification of Schr枚dinger’s cat. The box that the cat is sealed in contains a vial of poison gas that will be broken by the decay of the single radioactive atom in the box, whereupon the cat will be killed instantly. As there is only a single atom, the half life is irrelevant; the atom may decay today, tomorrow or at the end of the universe.
So far, the Christmas presents analogy may appear to hold, but this is where quantum mechanics gets weird. It represents the atom as a wave function that gives probabilities of decay, not an actual time of decay. Until we check and resolve the state of the atom, then it has both decayed and not decayed. It isn’t that we don’t know if the cat is alive or dead, it is that the cat is both alive and dead.
So the Christmas presents analogy collapses unless Grandma included a single radioactive element in the package that, when decaying, would destroy a random gift, but only one of them.
Be careful what you bring back from space
The repeated reference to returning samples to Earth for study in your article “How to spot an alien” gives me a great sense of foreboding. As a virologist, I don’t understand how any rational scientific mind could ever contemplate bringing material back to Earth if, never mind because, it shows some signature of alien life. Yes, we have secure labs, but even the most secure has its weakest link (27 December, p 32).
Something you might be tickled to know
Sam Wong’s “A ticklish question” states that “it is impossible to tickle yourself”. But I disagree 鈥� under one specific circumstance. When sleeping, if I don’t keep my twitchy fingers away from my torso, I will wake myself up with that “being tickled by someone else” feeling. I wonder if anyone else experiences this?
For the record
An analysis of 14 million children’s health records showed that 3.4 million of them received their first covid-19 vaccine dose from January 2020 to December 2021, while 3.9 million of them had covid-19 for the first time (15 November, p 7).