• Question: Do you think that computers are smart? Or do you think it is humans who are the smart ones?

    Asked by jacobandmikail to Yee Whye, Nick, Mackenzie, Jacob on 21 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Mackenzie Graham

      Mackenzie Graham answered on 21 Nov 2019:


      Computers aren’t very smart, they are good at following instructions and doing things quickly. So right now, the humans are the smart ones because they built the computers. But, if computers are able to decide for themselves what to learn, and can teach themselves, and eventually build themselves, they may be able to learn much faster than humans (because they can store and access much more information).

    • Photo: Yee Whye Teh

      Yee Whye Teh answered on 21 Nov 2019:


      Depends what you mean by smart. If you mean being able to figure out lots of things by themselves, and being able to quickly adapt to new situations, then humans are smarter. But computers are smart like being able to remember a lot of things, doing sums with big numbers very quickly and things like that. In a sense machine learning is about how to get computers to be smart like us.

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