hints of artificial intelligence

[redbird]

Last night, the National Weather Service's Webpage included a discussion of Hurricane Fabian that said, in effect (I don't remember the exact wording) "it's not clear why the forecasting models say X, but we'll accept it."

Our software is starting to know things that the human experts don't. That's a step toward AI, and a useful one: machines that can do something valuable that humans can't do ourselves, namely predict how hurricanes will behave.

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Something like this isn't any different from the fact that computers can calculate the first billion digits of π. Humans could apply mathematical models to simulate hurricanes, and humans could calculate a billion digits of π, but it would never happen, since we would get too bored. The only thing that computers can do that humans can't is not get bored. If not for that, humans could do anything computers can do, given an infinite amount of pencils, paper, and time.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

It's been an accepted point in the simulation world for some years that when a simulation does something _unexpected_, you begin to have a chance that it's really simulating something (of course, it can also be dead wrong, but it's going on a track that no one intentionally put in). I came across this first talking to someone about a major simulation his university was running to simulate how humans congregate, and, if I remember correctly, the thing invented the post office! None of the simulators had been looking in that direction.