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Comment Re: Animals have been making tools forever (Score 1) 59

Ligers or tigons are at least occasionally fertile. So the species are not completely separated. They're rare enough that the species are essentially separated, but it's a statistical argument, so there can still be gene flow.

N.B.: It's worth noting that fertile mules (or perhaps it was hinneys) are occasionally produced.

Species are only "completely separated" when the only gene flow between them is due to either human intervention or viral (or perhaps bacterial) infections. (FWIW, I've heard that the roots of the pea manufacture hemoglobin. If this is true it's probably an example of the viral transmission of genetic information.)

Comment MMph! Bad for customers. (Score 1) 30

I'd been considering for a year or so whether I should get an Apple computer to supplement my Linux system. (Well, really to generate programs that could run on an IPad.)

This is so unpleasant that I'm even thinking MS might be a better choice...and I haven't dealt with MS since the turn of the century.

OTOH, what it's really going to turn on is which company comes up with a good voice controlled computers that can read novels to me with reasonable pacing and emphasis. But Apple seems to be lagging behind there, too. (With luck, something like that will show up for Linux.)

Comment Re:40k years ago they came from Africa? ya right (Score 1) 59

But what constitutes a "species" isn't well defined. There are decent reasons for considering Cro-Magnon, Denisovian, and Neanderthal to be one species...but there are also decent reasons for considering them to be separate species. As long as two groups can interbreed if the happen to meet and be in the mood, you can't be sure they are separate species.

Comment Re:The cover up (Score 1) 53

OK. Basically an AI can be trained to do anything that a person can do **IF THERE IS A WAY TO CHECK THE ANSWER**. If the AI can't get good feedback, it can't learn to handle the problem correctly.

This is why I think that AGI is going to require embodiment, and LOTS of sensors. And it still often won't reach the same conclusions people reach. (Consider the arguments that even men and women have, and their goals/sensoria/brains are extremely similar.)

Comment Re:The cover up (Score 1) 53

The thing is, LLM is only one type of AI. All it does is try to handle language. Train it differently and it's not a LLM, but it can do quite well at, say, protein folding. (Note it's guessing how the protein would fold, but that used to be the domain of experts. After you get the guess, then you go and check, and the AI is doing as well, or possibly better, than the experts were doing.)

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