Strange Physics and Learning Machines
Chapter 1

COMING SOON

Before we begin, let's look back at how we got here...
...to the invention of artificial minds, learning in virtual space...

Video Clips from documentary series: The Machine That Changed the World

Source Links: 

Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KnkeON3UEE 

Episode 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&t=740s​ 

Beginning in the 1950's, two competing theories emerged about how machines could learn, resulting in the evolution of two different kinds of artificial intelligence.

Video Prompt to Veo 3.1: Both computer screens start by buzzing with static. Then on the left screen symbols appear: letters, numbers, and straight-lined checkerboard patterns. On the right screen webs appear: networks that tangle as lights move through them.

Both disembodied, but with strikingly different ways of processing information about the outside world.
Symbolic AI 
invited the question:

​Can everything ​be broken down into logical information which a computer can understand, or does far too much of reality defy mathematical reasoning?

Video Clips from documentary series: The Machine That Changed the World

Source Links: 

Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KnkeON3UEE 

Episode 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&t=740s 

YouTube Video Source Links:
The Machine That Changed the World: Episode 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWWlx7-t0k&t=740s 
A.I. Revolution | Full Documentary | NOVA PBS https://youtu.be/-sB12gk9ESA?is=YD5_PKgnsL5YRc8v
The Topology of Meaning Bridging Language, Perception, and AGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuen6Py1fxM
AI Has a “Body” Problem [Dr. Maxwell Ramstead] https://youtu.be/jsIt2sTB_vo?is=nvfPAADQ6-wn-kgJ

Connectionist AI 
introduced the question:

​Can learning patterns within massive amounts of data cover all the information that computational logic alone cannot describe? 

What kinds of knowledge might be missed or misunderstood?  

In this chapter, we will explore Symbolic AI and Connectionist AI as two disembodied, virtual creatures: two characters feeling rather competitive as they strive to understand the inside and outside of the computer. 

All dialogue in speech bubbles between the two is written by Claude, a connectionist AI.

 

Videos created with Kling.ai and edited together manually with Procreate Dreams: Recreation of the Sussman Anomaly (1973), a breakdown found in symbolic reasoning during machine learning research.

*AI video generators (which are Connectionist) can not animate this sequence with one verbal prompt. Each piece was generated between a Start frame and an End frame, then edited together*

Videos created with Kling.ai and edited together with Procreate Dreams

What Symbolic and Connectionist didn't expect was how imperfect the physical world would be. 

No angle perfectly 90 degrees, shadows and dirt that let no surface be a truly flat colour. 

And if that wasn't enough, there were new rules on the outside that they never encountered on the inside... 

Video prompt to Kling.ai 3.0: Zoom in and up on the robotic arm holding Block A as the robotic arm lifts block A upward. Then the robotic arm releases the block and it falls. Epic camera angles, panning making the block fall cinematically dramatic.

Video prompt to Veo 3.1: The robotic hand opens and shuts and opens. cinematic sound effects. The robotic hand reaches downward until the arm extends out of the frame at the bottom

Video Prompt to Kling 2.6: Block A falls upward towards the robotic arm. While floating upwards, the block turns to face the viewer perpendicularly, its face with the letter A as a perfect square. The block is caught by the robotic arm midair, which holds it still in the perpendicular position.