> Can you merely program a computer to see without creating optical
> hardware? No! You can program pattern recognizing neural nets day in and
> day out, but until you give the computer hardware [optics] to see with,
> it cannot see ... no matter how hard you try to program it to do so.
What if the images that the computer analyses were generated with
a ray-tracing program? No optical hardware needed.
> Can you merely program a robot to walk? No! You have to give the thing
> "legs" if you want it to walk, or wheels if you want it to roll. No
> matter how much time you invest in programming a computer to either walk
> or roll, that computer will do neither without the required hardware.
Randall Beer and his students successfully taught (programmed/trained/
evolved) a simulated cockroach to walk though it had no real (hardware)
legs. When the neural nets were later downloaded into a real robot it
could instantly walk in the real world.
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/