This looks suspicious. Imagine you didn’t know about Risch’s algorithm for finding antiderivatives. Would you then consider the problem “find me the antiderivative of this function, and please don’t get out of the box” to be on the same order of difficulty as (b)? Does Wolfram Alpha overturn your worldview? Last I looked, it wasn’t trying to get out...
Does Wolfram Alpha overturn your worldview? Last I looked, it wasn’t trying to get out...
Wolfram Alpha isn’t really “in a box” in the first place.
Like most modern machines, its sensors and actuators extend into the real world.
We do restrain machines—but mostly when testing them. Elsewhere, constraints are often considered to be unnecessary expense. If a machine is dangerous, we typically keep humans away from it—and not the other way around.
The difficulty level seems on the same order of magnitude.
This looks suspicious. Imagine you didn’t know about Risch’s algorithm for finding antiderivatives. Would you then consider the problem “find me the antiderivative of this function, and please don’t get out of the box” to be on the same order of difficulty as (b)? Does Wolfram Alpha overturn your worldview? Last I looked, it wasn’t trying to get out...
Not even remotely. I don’t accept the analogy.
Wolfram Alpha isn’t really “in a box” in the first place.
Like most modern machines, its sensors and actuators extend into the real world.
We do restrain machines—but mostly when testing them. Elsewhere, constraints are often considered to be unnecessary expense. If a machine is dangerous, we typically keep humans away from it—and not the other way around.