Jon writes:
< For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers, musicians
would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,
desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously
respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the
change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an
analogue synthesizer know? >
Knowing must involve a stable representation, e.g. to facilitate reasoning, but it also must be informed by a large network of relations.
Digital computers are really good at providing a stable representation. With an extensive sensor network and an ability to engage in an environment, it seems
reasonable to me to say an autonomous vehicle would know something about driving. It has to pass a Turing test. But I wonder to what extent humans benefit from their physical vulnerabilities to know things?
One example that comes to mind with quantum computing is that a SQUID can be used to implement a qubit (a somewhat stable representation), but it can also
be used as an exquisitely-sensitive sensor (low-field MRI). The non-digital aspects of an analog computer, e.g. entanglement with the environment, could be used to both sense and compute at once.
Marcus
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