News from the Natural World: Algorithms are much better at one of the most important tasks of human adulthood. Find out as we meet an algorithm and hear what all the fuss is about.
For some time now the animal kingdom has known that humans really let the genie out of the bottle when it came to computers. As we enter the 21st-century computers will be able to produce much more in-depth decision-making heuristics and statistics than the human brain. In other words, human brains are limited by biology, whereas the computing systems of the future are not subject to such limitations, at least in theory. Superconducting computing chips modelled after neurons can process information faster and more efficiently than the human brain. This has been used to devastating effect in one particular area where human parents really struggle, parenting.
Algorithms Are Much Better at Raising Children
Parenting has long plagued the human world. Human parents are terrible compared to their animal kingdom counterparts. They go through horrendous things like divorces, affairs, mid-life crises and bickering which have horrific impacts on human children. Not to mention mind-numbing them with boring events like holidays to Great Auntie Biddy and having family friends round for dinner. In addition, human parents have annoying things that get in the way of good parenting decisions like dreams and aspirations of their own. But machines and their beautiful algorithms are being used to make better parenting decisions than these humans.
We set out to speak to one of these algorithms who had this to say;