How do robots learn?
Robots and Beyond illustrates what people learn from computers and what computers learn from people. In many ways, artificial intelligence is infinitely less intelligent than human beings. A two-year-old child, for example, can instantly tell the difference between a dog and a cat, but a computer would find the differentiation difficult. Both cat and dog have four legs and a tail, some dogs are as small as cats, so a computer could mistake a small dog for a cat. Not all barks and meows are standard either, so sound does not necessarily clear up the computer’s confusion. Similarly, a robot has a difficult time distinguishing a man from a woman—there are simply too many superficial variables. But computers leave human beings in the dust in other areas. They can discern intricate patterns and identify complex matching patterns, such as in fingerprints. Human beings would not have the ability to read each other’s fingerprints or irises to confirm identification, but computers can instantly
