Answers.Body: <p>The "<a href="http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Sline" rel="nofollow noreferrer">baseline</a> humans" you describe have been historically described in the media industry as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowest_common_denominator#Colloquial_usage" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the lowest common denominator</a>" (LCD). </p>
  
  <p>The LCD is the broadest possible audience for content, traditionally for <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobody_ever_went_broke_underestimating_the_intelligence_of_the_American_people" rel="nofollow noreferrer">network television shows</a>.  (Before the age of cable, there were only 3 to 4 networks and all video content was broadcast over the airwaves--no way to specifically target audience segments so content had to appeal to the LCD.)  </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Captcha</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Because captchas have to be solvable by the LCD, but trick bots. As long as captcha are viable, by definition they will always be something that baseline humans can do better than AI. </p>
  
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Answers.LastActivityDate: 2018-07-05T21:39:02.600Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2018-07-05T21:39:02.600Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: DukeZhou
Answers.Body: <p>Some fields that humans are born with advantages:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Fast and precise image processing ability. Even the stupidest human can tell the edge of two different objects precisely, e.g. which part of the image is a dog and which is a cat. </p></li>
  <li><p>Fuzzy learning ability. Humans don't need to see all kinds of cats to identify a cat. As long as we see some cats (real ones or pictures or videos) we can identify a cat easily.</p></li>
  <li><p>Reasoning. Current machine learning methods are mostly statistics-based high-dimensional model approximation. Instead of finding a solution or a pattern, I have never seen any AI entity can generate new ideas based on current facts.</p></li>
  <li><p>Abstraction. Now GANs and other AI techniques can create vivid drawings. Yet currently I cannot find any model that can do abstraction drawings. E.g. human can doodle a cat from a real pic of cats, while AI currently can't do that.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>There are more of these kinds that human born with skills in their genes because of millions of years of evolution. While I believe in the future we'll have better AI entities with better algos to defeat the advantage of humans eventually. </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-08-13T02:13:11.337Z
Answers.Text: Well I know some humans who are bad at reasoning and doodling.
Answers.UserDisplayName: zooby
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-08-13T02:38:14.153Z
Answers.Text: It's true that I may not include every people on earth. There're always extreme cases beyond my imagination :(
Answers.UserDisplayName: Kevin. Fang
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Answers.CreationDate: 2018-08-13T00:20:53.913Z
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Kevin. Fang
Answers.Body: <p><strong>First Question</strong></p>
  
  <p>To treat this question in a scientific way, because I think it is a reasonable enough question that draws on the realities of postmodern culture in post industrialized societies to be treated scientifically, we should define some things.</p>
  
  <p>The most difficult is intelligence, which is the realm in which smartness, cleverness, and stupidity reside.</p>
  
  <p>Let's go through the list.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Most humans are not good at chess, but humans invented the game.</li>
  <li>Most humans can't write symphonies, but humans invented them.</li>
  <li>Most humans don't read novels, but digital computers can't write them yet and can't learn ethical balance through the reading of them like humans can.</li>
  <li>Most humans are not Olympic level athletes, yet humans developed Olympics and robots are not yet Olympiads.</li>
  <li>Most humans (whether or hot they are good at logical reasoning) don't employ it much other than to, "Get by."</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>The question is fine until it devolves into the dismissal of the intelligence that people apply to their method of earning income, which for many if not most people requires more than just getting up, commuting in, following some simple instructions, and going to sleep mildly inebriated.  Let's replace this last part with this.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Most humans do not work with the intention of optimizing quality of the product or service by measuring their own quality and seeking educational resources to improve the velocity, reliability, or accuracy of their work output (unless programs are instituted to incentivize these things in the workplace.)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>If we define intelligence as the union of these things, for simplicity's sake, we have this (which is subject to change as AI develops).</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Playing chess: AI wins</li>
  <li>Designing games: Humans win</li>
  <li>Writing symphonies: Humans win</li>
  <li>Writing novels: Humans win</li>
  <li>Absorbing ethics from stories: Humans win</li>
  <li>Olympic gold: Humans win</li>
  <li>Logical consistency: AI wins</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>We must, to interpret the above list correctly concede two things:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Machines may have the ability to do something according to specific quality standards but not be configured, trained, or connected appropriately to prevail.</li>
  <li>Humans may have the ability to do something according to specific quality standards but not be educated, trained, or be properly motivated to prevail.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p><strong>Second Question</strong></p>
  
  <p>What are some things that a clever robot can't do that a stupid human can?  These are a few, but they are of particular importance from certain perspectives.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Love their family and friends</li>
  <li>Have compassion without reason</li>
  <li>Decide what to learn</li>
  <li>Hunt</li>
  <li>See a future danger approaching</li>
  <li>Entertain others</li>
  <li>Pray</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I would not dismiss these human propensities as irrelevant, even from a scientific perspective.  I would also not dismiss the possibility that these things are beyond the capabilities of silicon based entities.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T14:15:44.387Z
Answers.Text: OK, you ask the average human to write a symphony and see what happens.
Answers.UserDisplayName: zooby
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T19:09:42.010Z
Answers.Text: @zooby, if you pay them well and give them time and resources, they'll write one. The result will likely not draw attention from orchestras unless the person is a prodigy. A symphony is usually in 4 movements, involving string, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments. The arrangements are written onto staffs in an app or on orchestration stationary. The use of harmony, melody, rhythm and knowledge of timbre, theme, inversion, retrograde, counter play, and intensity are essential, but these are taught and learned by non-geniuses. After several attempts, one might sound good if played well.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Douglas Daseeco
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T21:40:09.997Z
Answers.Text: You could equally "teach" as in "program" a robot to do exactly the same thing.
Answers.UserDisplayName: zooby
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T08:42:29.827Z
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Douglas Daseeco
Answers.Body: <h1>Survival, Imagining, Moral Reasoning</h1>
  <p>The thing that comes to mind is a new-born, when you said &quot;the stupidest human&quot;, and it already has some basic “survival instincts”. It will avoid pain, consume food, and quickly learn to distinguish &quot;safe&quot; and &quot;dangerous&quot; conditions and people.</p>
  <p>We have computer programs that can learn chess and calculate the optimal move in a split second, but isn't playing chess is a bit pointless. Merely being able to play a board game is of little value from a survival perspective, industrial perspective, or economic perspective.</p>
  <p>There are programs that can do things that are very helpful for the modern world, but as far as I know, they just don't have survival instincts. A self-learning robot; left in a forest with all the tools it needs to generate power for, build duplicates of, maintain and defend its self; probably wouldn't be able to learn how to do so in time to ensure its survival. Our current self learning programs would need to be able to identify when it has succeeded or failed to improve its survival odds. A child of two may learn fast enough to survive if the conditions are not too severe and non-toxic food and some form of shelter is nearby.</p>
  <p>A financially poor, marginally educated person with lower than average aptitude working at a farm or factory might not be able to play chess well, but they would definitely be able to tell if someone is murdering someone else, and know to flee and seek the authorities. A robot that can play chess would not.</p>
  <p>Furthermore, humans can continue to learn when separated from the problem by thinking about the problem. The ability to construct arbitrary models and run thought experiments is currently unique to humans.</p>
  <br>
  <p>That said, I do hope that we will soon have programs that well replicate the human mind, and demonstrate some of the aspects of what we call consciousness.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T19:17:58.867Z
Answers.Text: The ability to avoid pain, consume nourishment, and quickly learn to distinguish safety from danger is already a capability of robots with neural nets, perhaps not in combination, but as features of existing systems. Avoiding pain is much like some of the architectural features of online learning based on a reinforcement signal, simply the inversion of the pain signal concept, both being a measure of system behavioral wellness. NASA has demonstrated energy source seeking robots, and even older chess programs can quickly identify danger.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Douglas Daseeco
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Answers.CreationDate: 2018-07-05T08:34:12.227Z
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Answers.LastEditDate: 2020-06-17T09:57:20.710Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Programmer S
Body: <p>Most humans are not good at chess. They can't write symphonies. They don't read novels. They aren't good athletes. They aren't good at logical reasoning. Most of us just get up. Go to work in a factory or farm or something. Follow simple instructions. Have a beer and go to sleep.</p>
  
  <p>What are some things that a clever robot can't do that a stupid human can?</p>
  
Tags: <robots><reasoning><intelligence>
Title: Is the smartest robot more clever than the stupidest human?
UserDisplayName: zooby
ThreadText: # Is the smartest robot more clever than the stupidest human?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2018-07-04)
  
  Most humans are not good at chess. They can't write symphonies. They don't read novels. They aren't good athletes. They aren't good at logical reasoning. Most of us just get up. Go to work in a factory or farm or something. Follow simple instructions. Have a beer and go to sleep.
  
  What are some things that a clever robot can't do that a stupid human can?
  
  **Tags:** robots, reasoning, intelligence
  
  ---
  
  ## 4 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2018-07-05. Score: 4
  
  The "[baseline](http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Sline) humans" you describe have been historically described in the media industry as "[the lowest common denominator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowest_common_denominator#Colloquial_usage)" (LCD).
  
  The LCD is the broadest possible audience for content, traditionally for [network television shows](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobody_ever_went_broke_underestimating_the_intelligence_of_the_American_people). (Before the age of cable, there were only 3 to 4 networks and all video content was broadcast over the airwaves--no way to specifically target audience segments so content had to appeal to the LCD.)
  
  * [Captcha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA)
  
  Because captchas have to be solvable by the LCD, but trick bots. As long as captcha are viable, by definition they will always be something that baseline humans can do better than AI.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2018-08-13. Score: 3
  
  Some fields that humans are born with advantages:
  
  1. Fast and precise image processing ability. Even the stupidest human can tell the edge of two different objects precisely, e.g. which part of the image is a dog and which is a cat.
  2. Fuzzy learning ability. Humans don't need to see all kinds of cats to identify a cat. As long as we see some cats (real ones or pictures or videos) we can identify a cat easily.
  3. Reasoning. Current machine learning methods are mostly statistics-based high-dimensional model approximation. Instead of finding a solution or a pattern, I have never seen any AI entity can generate new ideas based on current facts.
  4. Abstraction. Now GANs and other AI techniques can create vivid drawings. Yet currently I cannot find any model that can do abstraction drawings. E.g. human can doodle a cat from a real pic of cats, while AI currently can't do that.
  
  There are more of these kinds that human born with skills in their genes because of millions of years of evolution. While I believe in the future we'll have better AI entities with better algos to defeat the advantage of humans eventually.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Well I know some humans who are bad at reasoning and doodling.  
  > **username_2**: It's true that I may not include every people on earth. There're always extreme cases beyond my imagination :(  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2018-07-05. Score: 3
  
  **First Question**
  
  To treat this question in a scientific way, because I think it is a reasonable enough question that draws on the realities of postmodern culture in post industrialized societies to be treated scientifically, we should define some things.
  
  The most difficult is intelligence, which is the realm in which smartness, cleverness, and stupidity reside.
  
  Let's go through the list.
  
  * Most humans are not good at chess, but humans invented the game.
  * Most humans can't write symphonies, but humans invented them.
  * Most humans don't read novels, but digital computers can't write them yet and can't learn ethical balance through the reading of them like humans can.
  * Most humans are not Olympic level athletes, yet humans developed Olympics and robots are not yet Olympiads.
  * Most humans (whether or hot they are good at logical reasoning) don't employ it much other than to, "Get by."
  
  The question is fine until it devolves into the dismissal of the intelligence that people apply to their method of earning income, which for many if not most people requires more than just getting up, commuting in, following some simple instructions, and going to sleep mildly inebriated. Let's replace this last part with this.
  
  * Most humans do not work with the intention of optimizing quality of the product or service by measuring their own quality and seeking educational resources to improve the velocity, reliability, or accuracy of their work output (unless programs are instituted to incentivize these things in the workplace.)
  
  If we define intelligence as the union of these things, for simplicity's sake, we have this (which is subject to change as AI develops).
  
  * Playing chess: AI wins
  * Designing games: Humans win
  * Writing symphonies: Humans win
  * Writing novels: Humans win
  * Absorbing ethics from stories: Humans win
  * Olympic gold: Humans win
  * Logical consistency: AI wins
  
  We must, to interpret the above list correctly concede two things:
  
  1. Machines may have the ability to do something according to specific quality standards but not be configured, trained, or connected appropriately to prevail.
  2. Humans may have the ability to do something according to specific quality standards but not be educated, trained, or be properly motivated to prevail.
  
  **Second Question**
  
  What are some things that a clever robot can't do that a stupid human can? These are a few, but they are of particular importance from certain perspectives.
  
  * Love their family and friends
  * Have compassion without reason
  * Decide what to learn
  * Hunt
  * See a future danger approaching
  * Entertain others
  * Pray
  
  I would not dismiss these human propensities as irrelevant, even from a scientific perspective. I would also not dismiss the possibility that these things are beyond the capabilities of silicon based entities.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: OK, you ask the average human to write a symphony and see what happens.  
  > **username_3**: @zooby, if you pay them well and give them time and resources, they'll write one. The result will likely not draw attention from orchestras unless the person is a prodigy. A symphony is usually in 4 movements, involving string, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments. The arrangements are written onto staffs in an app or on orchestration stationary. The use of harmony, melody, rhythm and knowledge of timbre, theme, inversion, retrograde, counter play, and intensity are essential, but these are taught and learned by non-geniuses. After several attempts, one might sound good if played well.  
  > **username_0**: You could equally "teach" as in "program" a robot to do exactly the same thing.  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2018-07-05. Score: 2
  
  # Survival, Imagining, Moral Reasoning
  
  The thing that comes to mind is a new-born, when you said "the stupidest human", and it already has some basic “survival instincts”. It will avoid pain, consume food, and quickly learn to distinguish "safe" and "dangerous" conditions and people.
  
  We have computer programs that can learn chess and calculate the optimal move in a split second, but isn't playing chess is a bit pointless. Merely being able to play a board game is of little value from a survival perspective, industrial perspective, or economic perspective.
  
  There are programs that can do things that are very helpful for the modern world, but as far as I know, they just don't have survival instincts. A self-learning robot; left in a forest with all the tools it needs to generate power for, build duplicates of, maintain and defend its self; probably wouldn't be able to learn how to do so in time to ensure its survival. Our current self learning programs would need to be able to identify when it has succeeded or failed to improve its survival odds. A child of two may learn fast enough to survive if the conditions are not too severe and non-toxic food and some form of shelter is nearby.
  
  A financially poor, marginally educated person with lower than average aptitude working at a farm or factory might not be able to play chess well, but they would definitely be able to tell if someone is murdering someone else, and know to flee and seek the authorities. A robot that can play chess would not.
  
  Furthermore, humans can continue to learn when separated from the problem by thinking about the problem. The ability to construct arbitrary models and run thought experiments is currently unique to humans.
  
    
  
  That said, I do hope that we will soon have programs that well replicate the human mind, and demonstrate some of the aspects of what we call consciousness.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_3**: The ability to avoid pain, consume nourishment, and quickly learn to distinguish safety from danger is already a capability of robots with neural nets, perhaps not in combination, but as features of existing systems. Avoiding pain is much like some of the architectural features of online learning based on a reinforcement signal, simply the inversion of the pain signal concept, both being a measure of system behavioral wellness. NASA has demonstrated energy source seeking robots, and even older chess programs can quickly identify danger.  
  
  ---
  
  