Star Trek: Prodigy

[Riedquat]

That bothered me with The Orville - the idea that a human pilot's skill should make any difference seems ridiculous. It goes beyond their actively using humans instead of automation; it's using a slow and stupid human to perform functions that the computer could manage faster and ought to manage better.

There is an constant idea that a human pilot can make better decisions than a computer can. Or off the cuff ones at least. That is a basic premise of a human versus a AI one at least. Doing something that an AI would not have thought of due to some inherit risk or low probability of success sort of thing.

The sort of probability that would think would be in the 0.001% range but yet the human won over the AI.

To be fair it's hard to know and very much depends on the circumstances. There are some things humans are vastly better at than current AI (most obviously dealing with very novel situations), with no obvious sign that that'll change as of now, so how much it does for a scifi work is up to the writer. But on a space ship that seems more likely to involve a human giving the orders and a computer carrying them out. Star Wars seems the most plausibe for having a pilot, since at least a Jedi would be capable of stuff a machine isn't, not that most pilots there are Jedi.

You've got to reject AI though to a large degree to make an interesting show though, it would be all too plausible to say there's no need to have anyone doing anything; TBH Wall-E looks about the most plausible one in that regard, only one human with a job and he's almost entirely a figurehead with nothing much to do (it's the most realistic depection of the future of the human race FWIW).

[Frustration]

Electronic signals travel at close to the speed of light, and at least in Star Trek their computers utilize subspace technology to send signals *faster* than light. Brains have more processing power than computers only because they're massively redundant and built out of components the size of cells.

By the time of Star Trek or The Orville or what have you, there ought to be nothing that a human brain can do that an artificial computer cannot do better.

[Frustration]

You've got to reject AI though to a large degree to make an interesting show though, it would be all too plausible to say there's no need to have anyone doing anything; TBH Wall-E looks about the most plausible one in that regard, only one human with a job and he's almost entirely a figurehead with nothing much to do (it's the most realistic depection of the future of the human race FWIW).

I would like to recommend the webcomic Freefall to your attention. Don't be intimidated by its having been around for twenty years - its update schedule used to be much, much more infrequent than it is now.

[Riedquat]

Electronic signals travel at close to the speed of light, and at least in Star Trek their computers utilize subspace technology to send signals *faster* than light. Brains have more processing power than computers only because they're massively redundant and built out of components the size of cells.

By the time of Star Trek or The Orville or what have you, there ought to be nothing that a human brain can do that an artificial computer cannot do better.

Actually the big advantage of a brain is just how parallel it is.

No reason to assume that a particular technology will be a in a particular state by a particular time. Or that computers will ever be able to be truly creative (no theoretical reason why not, but that's different from doable).

[Madner Kami]

Brains have more processing power than computers only because they're massively redundant and built out of components the size of cells.

In general, neurons are literally a 1,000 times larger than modern day transistors. Fittingly, a single transistor can react a 1,000 times faster than a neuron can. The advantage of the neuron lies in interconnectability. Where a transistor has only three connection-points, a neuron has multiple thousands of connections.

[Frustration]

Neurons are technically computers in their own right.

[Madner Kami]

In which regard?

[Frustration]

They can calculate, and the calculations they perform can be changed by the input they receive. Thus, computers.

[Riedquat]

They can calculate, and the calculations they perform can be changed by the input they receive. Thus, computers.

Needs to be more than that to be properly labelled as a computer - a caclulator isn't a computer for example.

[Madner Kami]

They can calculate, and the calculations they perform can be changed by the input they receive. Thus, computers.

Needs to be more than that to be properly labelled as a computer - a caclulator isn't a computer for example.

A calculator is performing mathematical computations. It's quite literally a computer. It just happens to be more limited in it's applications than other computers.