The app currently offers 25 different practice modules and supports 10 languages. I built it because I noticed that many people struggle to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application in conversations.
Tech stack: I built the front-end using Flutter, making the app available for both Android and iOS. The backend is powered by Django and PostgreSQL. For generating chats and feedback, I use the OpenAI API or Anthropic, whichever performed better during testing, based on the module and user's language.
It's still in early stages, and I'm actively working on improvements. I'd really appreciate any feedback from the HN community, especially on user experience and which scenarios/modules would be most valuable to add.
Thank you!"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Show HN: Sapio \u2013 Learn and Grow with Interactive AI Simulated Conversations"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"https://sapioai.net"}},"_tags":["story","author_clirimfurriku","story_42028206","show_hn"],"author":"clirimfurriku","created_at":"2024-11-02T18:30:39Z","created_at_i":1730572239,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"42028206","points":1,"story_id":42028206,"story_text":"I built Sapio to help people improve various skills through interactive conversations. Instead of passive learning, users engage in simulated chats where they actively apply their knowledge and receive immediate feedback on their responses.
The app currently offers 25 different practice modules and supports 10 languages. I built it because I noticed that many people struggle to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application in conversations.
Tech stack: I built the front-end using Flutter, making the app available for both Android and iOS. The backend is powered by Django and PostgreSQL. For generating chats and feedback, I use the OpenAI API or Anthropic, whichever performed better during testing, based on the module and user's language.
It's still in early stages, and I'm actively working on improvements. I'd really appreciate any feedback from the HN community, especially on user experience and which scenarios/modules would be most valuable to add.
Thank you!","title":"Show HN: Sapio \u2013 Learn and Grow with Interactive AI Simulated Conversations","updated_at":"2024-11-02T18:34:31Z","url":"https://sapioai.net"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"kokayie"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Interview with Francesco Sapio"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"http://bestprogrammingbooks.com/interview-francesco-sapio-author-getting-started-unity-2d-game-development-second-edition/"}},"_tags":["story","author_kokayie","story_14313467"],"author":"kokayie","created_at":"2017-05-11T02:26:30Z","created_at_i":1494469590,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"14313467","points":1,"story_id":14313467,"title":"Interview with Francesco Sapio","updated_at":"2024-09-20T00:44:50Z","url":"http://bestprogrammingbooks.com/interview-francesco-sapio-author-getting-started-unity-2d-game-development-second-edition/"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"seabee"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"If it makes you feel better (worse?), even the big guys do this; I recall reading SAP HANA marketing materials which did a similar thing to OP[0]. With enough precomputation and knowing which data to skip, you too can achieve better than linear performance; though at least they aren't suggesting they are churning through the entire dataset in a few seconds.
[0] http://www54.sap.com/content/dam/site/sapcom/global/usa/en_u..."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Processing 6 billion records in 4 seconds on a home PC"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://github.com/antonmks/Alenka/blob/master/green.md"}},"_tags":["comment","author_seabee","story_6472285"],"author":"seabee","comment_text":"If it makes you feel better (worse?), even the big guys do this; I recall reading SAP HANA marketing materials which did a similar thing to OP[0]. With enough precomputation and knowing which data to skip, you too can achieve better than linear performance; though at least they aren't suggesting they are churning through the entire dataset in a few seconds.
[0] http://www54.sap.com/content/dam/site/sapcom/global/usa/en_u...","created_at":"2013-09-30T23:27:41Z","created_at_i":1380583661,"objectID":"6473014","parent_id":6472848,"story_id":6472285,"story_title":"Processing 6 billion records in 4 seconds on a home PC","story_url":"https://github.com/antonmks/Alenka/blob/master/green.md","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:05:15Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jimbokun"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"But of course:
\"The record of the Vice Fund has not been without blemishes. Its founder, Richard A. Sapio, and two other executives at the fund's advisory firm, Mutuals.com, were accused in 2003 of securities-related fraud and in 2004 of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud.\"
Maybe the kind of thing you should think about before investing in something proudly calling itself \"The Vice Fund\"."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"At Least on Wall Street, Wages of Sin Beat Those of Virtue"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/business/14vice.html?ex=1347422400&en=084ed93c655e9530&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss"}},"_tags":["comment","author_jimbokun","story_54543"],"author":"jimbokun","comment_text":"But of course:
\"The record of the Vice Fund has not been without blemishes. Its founder, Richard A. Sapio, and two other executives at the fund's advisory firm, Mutuals.com, were accused in 2003 of securities-related fraud and in 2004 of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud.\"
Maybe the kind of thing you should think about before investing in something proudly calling itself \"The Vice Fund\".","created_at":"2007-09-14T15:11:51Z","created_at_i":1189782711,"objectID":"54599","parent_id":54543,"story_id":54543,"story_title":"At Least on Wall Street, Wages of Sin Beat Those of Virtue","story_url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/business/14vice.html?ex=1347422400&en=084ed93c655e9530&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss","updated_at":"2024-09-19T16:22:00Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"gggeek"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Quite interesting! I just happened to be searching for "a webserver written in php" today... Here's a few questions off the top of my head (happy to move them to GitHub if you prefer)
1. there are only 31 commits in the repo, no tags, no branches. How can one verify the "10 years of development and real life usage" ?
2. any plans to do a release soon?
3. why not adopt "/public" instead of "/web" as it is the most common name for the web root directory?
4. what about $_SERVER, $_ENV, $_GET, $_POST, $_COOKIES, I presume the value for those are set up by the webserver before forking and handing off execution to the user code?
5. if so, what about having a "psr" mode where a psr-compliant ServerRequest object instance is set up, and time/memory is saved by not populating the standard env vars? Also, a class would be nice that uses the `Q` functions to output a Prs Request, similar to what laminas\\...\\SapiEmitter does
5. support for virtualhosts: is there any at all?
6. support for listening on unix sockets: is there any at all? (eg. to create a proxy for the Docker socket)
7. hardening of the http parser: before I start digging into the code: what kind of testing was done to insure it is robust enough? Are f.e. super-long header lines tested for? Are unknown http methods rejected or let through by default? What about requests with 2 Host headers, etc...
8. Speaking of which: would this server be able to let php scripts tell apart an http request with 2 times the same header from a request with that header present a single time with a value equal to the comma-concatenation? In othre words: can it be used to implement smarter parsing of http headers than what the CGI/FCGI spec allows?
9. How does Qbix compare to previous efforts to develop a pure-php webserver, such as https://github.com/appserver-io/webserver/ ?"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Standalone webserver written in pure PHP. No more need for nginx, php-fpm, etc."},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://github.com/Qbix/webserver"}},"_tags":["comment","author_gggeek","story_48979381"],"author":"gggeek","children":[49073808],"comment_text":"Quite interesting! I just happened to be searching for "a webserver written in php" today... Here's a few questions off the top of my head (happy to move them to GitHub if you prefer)
1. there are only 31 commits in the repo, no tags, no branches. How can one verify the "10 years of development and real life usage" ?
2. any plans to do a release soon?
3. why not adopt "/public" instead of "/web" as it is the most common name for the web root directory?
4. what about $_SERVER, $_ENV, $_GET, $_POST, $_COOKIES, I presume the value for those are set up by the webserver before forking and handing off execution to the user code?
5. if so, what about having a "psr" mode where a psr-compliant ServerRequest object instance is set up, and time/memory is saved by not populating the standard env vars? Also, a class would be nice that uses the `Q` functions to output a Prs Request, similar to what laminas\\...\\SapiEmitter does
5. support for virtualhosts: is there any at all?
6. support for listening on unix sockets: is there any at all? (eg. to create a proxy for the Docker socket)
7. hardening of the http parser: before I start digging into the code: what kind of testing was done to insure it is robust enough? Are f.e. super-long header lines tested for? Are unknown http methods rejected or let through by default? What about requests with 2 Host headers, etc...
8. Speaking of which: would this server be able to let php scripts tell apart an http request with 2 times the same header from a request with that header present a single time with a value equal to the comma-concatenation? In othre words: can it be used to implement smarter parsing of http headers than what the CGI/FCGI spec allows?
9. How does Qbix compare to previous efforts to develop a pure-php webserver, such as https://github.com/appserver-io/webserver/ ?","created_at":"2026-07-27T18:27:43Z","created_at_i":1785176863,"objectID":"49073705","parent_id":48979381,"story_id":48979381,"story_title":"Standalone webserver written in pure PHP. No more need for nginx, php-fpm, etc.","story_url":"https://github.com/Qbix/webserver","updated_at":"2026-07-27T18:34:34Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"wslh"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"I don't think it makes any sense except for fun, Bitcoin scripts are pretty limited and there are a lot of previous work [1][2][3][4][5].
[1] https://bitcoin.sipa.be/miniscript/
[2] https://min.sc/
[4] https://github.com/sapio-lang/sapio
[5] https://github.com/ivy-lang/ivy-bitcoin"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Bithoven \u2013 A high-level, imperative language for Bitcoin Smart Contract"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://github.com/ChrisCho-H/bithoven"}},"_tags":["comment","author_wslh","story_46273877"],"author":"wslh","children":[46322352],"comment_text":"I don't think it makes any sense except for fun, Bitcoin scripts are pretty limited and there are a lot of previous work [1][2][3][4][5].
[1] https://bitcoin.sipa.be/miniscript/
[2] https://min.sc/
[4] https://github.com/sapio-lang/sapio
[5] https://github.com/ivy-lang/ivy-bitcoin","created_at":"2025-12-19T04:05:35Z","created_at_i":1766117135,"objectID":"46322161","parent_id":46273877,"story_id":46273877,"story_title":"Show HN: Bithoven \u2013 A high-level, imperative language for Bitcoin Smart Contract","story_url":"https://github.com/ChrisCho-H/bithoven","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:14:12Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"vguiy66y"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Envy, fear, contempt, ... there's a whole bunch of negative emotion directed toward the smarter ones. Or if it isn't hateful, they try to manipulate them into doing their work for them. Very little just plain ol' accepance of them.
If you're lucky you'll get the sapiophiles.
Maybe you haven't been around people who aren't intelligent. Or maybe you aren't. But when there is a divide in intelligence it is rarely good."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Are you stuck in movie logic?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/are-you-stuck-in-movie-logic"}},"_tags":["comment","author_vguiy66y","story_45952890"],"author":"vguiy66y","comment_text":"Envy, fear, contempt, ... there's a whole bunch of negative emotion directed toward the smarter ones. Or if it isn't hateful, they try to manipulate them into doing their work for them. Very little just plain ol' accepance of them.
If you're lucky you'll get the sapiophiles.
Maybe you haven't been around people who aren't intelligent. Or maybe you aren't. But when there is a divide in intelligence it is rarely good.","created_at":"2025-11-18T04:55:36Z","created_at_i":1763441736,"objectID":"45961540","parent_id":45960186,"story_id":45952890,"story_title":"Are you stuck in movie logic?","story_url":"https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/are-you-stuck-in-movie-logic","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:01:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"sim04ful"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"What if we shifted our focus entirely from the source of information to how useful and accurate it is?
I can't see how the prevalent value system could avoid being "sapio-supremacist" ? is "future proof" to include intelligences that are artificial but whose "sentience" is otherwise human equivalent or "greater""},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: How can we keep (part of) the web human?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_sim04ful","story_44330815"],"author":"sim04ful","children":[44331620,44331678,44332545,44338769],"comment_text":"What if we shifted our focus entirely from the source of information to how useful and accurate it is?
I can't see how the prevalent value system could avoid being "sapio-supremacist" ? is "future proof" to include intelligences that are artificial but whose "sentience" is otherwise human equivalent or "greater"","created_at":"2025-06-20T20:06:54Z","created_at_i":1750450014,"objectID":"44331555","parent_id":44330815,"story_id":44330815,"story_title":"Ask HN: How can we keep (part of) the web human?","updated_at":"2025-06-27T19:45:09Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ayrtondesozzla"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Sapiocentric is a great word, get into my lexicon, thank you"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://default.blog/p/an-efilist-just-bombed-a-fertility"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ayrtondesozzla","story_44024870"],"author":"ayrtondesozzla","comment_text":"Sapiocentric is a great word, get into my lexicon, thank you","created_at":"2025-05-19T14:22:42Z","created_at_i":1747664562,"objectID":"44030231","parent_id":44026579,"story_id":44024870,"story_title":"An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?","story_url":"https://default.blog/p/an-efilist-just-bombed-a-fertility","updated_at":"2025-05-19T15:38:33Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"CuriouslyC"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"I didn't forget, it's just not a useful thing to throw at people who have a dualistic, sapiocentric view of reality."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://default.blog/p/an-efilist-just-bombed-a-fertility"}},"_tags":["comment","author_CuriouslyC","story_44024870"],"author":"CuriouslyC","children":[44030231],"comment_text":"I didn't forget, it's just not a useful thing to throw at people who have a dualistic, sapiocentric view of reality.","created_at":"2025-05-19T04:49:26Z","created_at_i":1747630166,"objectID":"44026579","parent_id":44026086,"story_id":44024870,"story_title":"An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?","story_url":"https://default.blog/p/an-efilist-just-bombed-a-fertility","updated_at":"2025-05-19T20:27:05Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jonfromsf"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Oh man, it's the sexual orientation police. Hide the sapio-sexuals, everybody!"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"UK Supreme Court live: trans women are not legally women, judges rule"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/supreme-court-live-woman-definition-latest-news-llhzj62xs"}},"_tags":["comment","author_jonfromsf","story_43703858"],"author":"jonfromsf","comment_text":"Oh man, it's the sexual orientation police. Hide the sapio-sexuals, everybody!","created_at":"2025-04-21T17:52:38Z","created_at_i":1745257958,"objectID":"43754562","parent_id":43736741,"story_id":43703858,"story_title":"UK Supreme Court live: trans women are not legally women, judges rule","story_url":"https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/supreme-court-live-woman-definition-latest-news-llhzj62xs","updated_at":"2025-04-21T17:58:31Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"westlifer"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"I did Google it. So perhaps you can explain how these three tweets from Matt are evidence of him being a "transphobic bigot", as others are claiming:
1.
> When will you be honest with your followers? That the repeated adult content\nviolations were not pictures like this, but likely ones on your other accounts (actual\nnames): irishbigcockgiri, burgerfootjob, furryvore-burps, bredstrogen, cumburp, doggirlballsack, hungqueen, bigtittycockgf, bigcocktittygf, girltaint, muskmommy, girlballsack, showersharts, sapiosexual-breeder, catgirlhairball, catgirlcondom, catgirlcumsock, catgirlballsack, cumspangler.
2.
> These photos are fine for Tumblr. Someone else could post them. You can't because you violated the community guidelines and terms of service multiple times and are banned for life. With your new accounts on other services, consider not posting deathwishes against their staff.
3.
> Reporting credible threats of violence or terrorism is actually a legal requirement. No one reported your "i hope photomatt dies forever a painful death", however.
> There's no problem with your transition photos, or the millions of others that have\nbeen posted.
That last tweet in particular is evidence against the claim, is it not?"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Mullenweg Shuts Down WordPress Sustainability Team, Igniting Backlash"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.therepository.email/mullenweg-shuts-down-wordpress-sustainability-team-igniting-backlash"}},"_tags":["comment","author_westlifer","story_42672675"],"author":"westlifer","children":[42675324],"comment_text":"I did Google it. So perhaps you can explain how these three tweets from Matt are evidence of him being a "transphobic bigot", as others are claiming:
1.
> When will you be honest with your followers? That the repeated adult content\nviolations were not pictures like this, but likely ones on your other accounts (actual\nnames): irishbigcockgiri, burgerfootjob, furryvore-burps, bredstrogen, cumburp, doggirlballsack, hungqueen, bigtittycockgf, bigcocktittygf, girltaint, muskmommy, girlballsack, showersharts, sapiosexual-breeder, catgirlhairball, catgirlcondom, catgirlcumsock, catgirlballsack, cumspangler.
2.
> These photos are fine for Tumblr. Someone else could post them. You can't because you violated the community guidelines and terms of service multiple times and are banned for life. With your new accounts on other services, consider not posting deathwishes against their staff.
3.
> Reporting credible threats of violence or terrorism is actually a legal requirement. No one reported your "i hope photomatt dies forever a painful death", however.
> There's no problem with your transition photos, or the millions of others that have\nbeen posted.
That last tweet in particular is evidence against the claim, is it not?","created_at":"2025-01-12T16:39:52Z","created_at_i":1736699992,"objectID":"42674743","parent_id":42674687,"story_id":42672675,"story_title":"Mullenweg Shuts Down WordPress Sustainability Team, Igniting Backlash","story_url":"https://www.therepository.email/mullenweg-shuts-down-wordpress-sustainability-team-igniting-backlash","updated_at":"2025-01-13T21:17:22Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ben_w"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Are you familiar with the egg of Columbus?
These things were all called "impossible" \u2014 and in some cases "unthinkable" \u2014 when my dad was born; supersonic simply looks like "a question of manufacturing processes" because we here in 2024 already know (as a society if not as individuals) how to make a jet engine that doesn't melt itself during operation and a rocket that doesn't explode. Going to the moon was itself the metaphor for "you can't do that thing". Rutherford famously dismissed the idea of extracting useful energy from nuclear reactions as talking "moonshine".
Before Deep Blue, sensible people insisted that Chess "required" the human intellect and couldn't be reduced to mere calculation. When it turned out to the contrary, then the goalposts moved to Go because that game was too complex to explore the state space and you can't even write a simple function to estimate how good a move was the way you can add up piece point values in chess. And then Go fell, and people suddenly decided it wasn't special after all, and "what really matters is emotional intelligence, which machines will never replicate":
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
If it is sufficient to look "at the fundamental laws and materials of matter, finding their inner workings and theorizing more useful ways of using these inner workings", then that would also suffice for intelligence, because we are existence proofs that it's possible to make a ~1.5kg, 20 watt, human-level chemical intelligence.
Everything we've done with A.I. since the field began, has been theory and testing of attempts to replicate various aspects of our intelligence.
> Sure, computers can write symphonies, but they are very far away from inventing something like a symphony. Which I would describe as something close to sapiogenesis.
If you shift the goalposts like that, then you would fail any single human, and only have sapience for the species as a whole super-organism. The word has meant a variety of different concepts before reaching its current meaning, as the economic and technological milieu, as well as the existing body of works that they were expected to be familiar with and innovate on (but only a bit because too much change all at once makes people hate you*) all continuously changed the composer's capacities for grandeur. No single composer created the modern form ex nihilo, nor even any single step towards it from the ancient Greek \u03c3\u03cd\u03bc\u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 (harmony), each step was building piece-by-piece on those who came before.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Sa\u00ebns)#Re...
But again, this is to miss the point. The people in 2004 who wrote that script, didn't have Del Spooner say "Sure, we all know robots can write a symphony or turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece, but can they invent the concept of symphony if we never told it to them?"
To put it another way, using your own words:
> just like how I would never have thought of a ladder if I never saw one and never had a need for one
And yet, about 20 years later, never mind the 77 since the transistor or the 80.7 years of average UK life expectancy? The path the scriptwriters went for was to have the character of Sonny respond "Can you?", pointing out that most humans can't compose or paint either, not by making Sonny create works faster than most printers can actually print them \u2014 a thing which is already possible for high end systems today, which those script writers couldn't conceive of.
And not just script writers: between graduation (2006) and the actual release of these models, I've had conversations with co-workers, software engineers, who didn't think that what these models do was possible.
> I maintain that intelligence won't be cracked in my lifetime, knowing that I could look silly doing so. We can't even quantify what intelligence is, let alone begin to work towards it.
I mean, I don't know how old you are, but I don't want to predict anything after the early 2030s, even in relatively simple areas like energy production: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/03/23-17.24.34.html
But we absolutely can quantify intelligence, that's what IQ tests are and we've had them for ages, the problem right now is that we're not sure if there's a single "general" thing or lots of small skills in different areas. Humans seem to have a G-factor, but the machines keep passing all our tests almost as fast as we can fill in the gaps in this sentence: "sure, they can ${old test}, but they won't be intelligent until they can ${new test}"."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Elephants use namelike calls"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ben_w","story_41000846"],"author":"ben_w","comment_text":"Are you familiar with the egg of Columbus?
These things were all called "impossible" \u2014 and in some cases "unthinkable" \u2014 when my dad was born; supersonic simply looks like "a question of manufacturing processes" because we here in 2024 already know (as a society if not as individuals) how to make a jet engine that doesn't melt itself during operation and a rocket that doesn't explode. Going to the moon was itself the metaphor for "you can't do that thing". Rutherford famously dismissed the idea of extracting useful energy from nuclear reactions as talking "moonshine".
Before Deep Blue, sensible people insisted that Chess "required" the human intellect and couldn't be reduced to mere calculation. When it turned out to the contrary, then the goalposts moved to Go because that game was too complex to explore the state space and you can't even write a simple function to estimate how good a move was the way you can add up piece point values in chess. And then Go fell, and people suddenly decided it wasn't special after all, and "what really matters is emotional intelligence, which machines will never replicate":
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
If it is sufficient to look "at the fundamental laws and materials of matter, finding their inner workings and theorizing more useful ways of using these inner workings", then that would also suffice for intelligence, because we are existence proofs that it's possible to make a ~1.5kg, 20 watt, human-level chemical intelligence.
Everything we've done with A.I. since the field began, has been theory and testing of attempts to replicate various aspects of our intelligence.
> Sure, computers can write symphonies, but they are very far away from inventing something like a symphony. Which I would describe as something close to sapiogenesis.
If you shift the goalposts like that, then you would fail any single human, and only have sapience for the species as a whole super-organism. The word has meant a variety of different concepts before reaching its current meaning, as the economic and technological milieu, as well as the existing body of works that they were expected to be familiar with and innovate on (but only a bit because too much change all at once makes people hate you*) all continuously changed the composer's capacities for grandeur. No single composer created the modern form ex nihilo, nor even any single step towards it from the ancient Greek \u03c3\u03cd\u03bc\u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 (harmony), each step was building piece-by-piece on those who came before.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Sa\u00ebns)#Re...
But again, this is to miss the point. The people in 2004 who wrote that script, didn't have Del Spooner say "Sure, we all know robots can write a symphony or turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece, but can they invent the concept of symphony if we never told it to them?"
To put it another way, using your own words:
> just like how I would never have thought of a ladder if I never saw one and never had a need for one
And yet, about 20 years later, never mind the 77 since the transistor or the 80.7 years of average UK life expectancy? The path the scriptwriters went for was to have the character of Sonny respond "Can you?", pointing out that most humans can't compose or paint either, not by making Sonny create works faster than most printers can actually print them \u2014 a thing which is already possible for high end systems today, which those script writers couldn't conceive of.
And not just script writers: between graduation (2006) and the actual release of these models, I've had conversations with co-workers, software engineers, who didn't think that what these models do was possible.
> I maintain that intelligence won't be cracked in my lifetime, knowing that I could look silly doing so. We can't even quantify what intelligence is, let alone begin to work towards it.
I mean, I don't know how old you are, but I don't want to predict anything after the early 2030s, even in relatively simple areas like energy production: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/03/23-17.24.34.html
But we absolutely can quantify intelligence, that's what IQ tests are and we've had them for ages, the problem right now is that we're not sure if there's a single "general" thing or lots of small skills in different areas. Humans seem to have a G-factor, but the machines keep passing all our tests almost as fast as we can fill in the gaps in this sentence: "sure, they can ${old test}, but they won't be intelligent until they can ${new test}".","created_at":"2024-07-22T20:58:20Z","created_at_i":1721681900,"objectID":"41039738","parent_id":41029075,"story_id":41000846,"story_title":"Elephants use namelike calls","story_url":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:27:29Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"explaingarlic"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"A lot of the velocity you listed was not as quick as it seems.
Supersonic flight is a question of manufacturing processes more than anything; we could always scale engines to make more power, just that making them light while being producible to a specific degree of accuracy was difficult.
Nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 and implemented successfully in 1945. Of course nobody would have thought of it - just like how I would never have thought of a ladder if I never saw one and never had a need for one. It's a question of looking at the fundamental laws and materials of matter, finding their inner workings and theorizing more useful ways of using these inner workings. We didn't put a stupid amount of effort into nuclear fission relative to how much it changed the world - I'm willing to bet that more cost has been put into r&d for office furniture than for the nuclear bomb.
Chess is a simple game of calculation, not a sign of intelligence. It merely reflects the ability to calculate, which is the strength of scalable computers. It just so happens that we came up with computers and they work well in this space - there's no telling of things we haven't discovered because we haven't thought to implement anything to do with them.
Sure, computers can write symphonies, but they are very far away from inventing something like a symphony. Which I would describe as something close to sapiogenesis.
I maintain that intelligence won't be cracked in my lifetime, knowing that I could look silly doing so. We can't even quantify what intelligence is, let alone begin to work towards it."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Elephants use namelike calls"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_explaingarlic","story_41000846"],"author":"explaingarlic","children":[41039738,41041742,41082092],"comment_text":"A lot of the velocity you listed was not as quick as it seems.
Supersonic flight is a question of manufacturing processes more than anything; we could always scale engines to make more power, just that making them light while being producible to a specific degree of accuracy was difficult.
Nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 and implemented successfully in 1945. Of course nobody would have thought of it - just like how I would never have thought of a ladder if I never saw one and never had a need for one. It's a question of looking at the fundamental laws and materials of matter, finding their inner workings and theorizing more useful ways of using these inner workings. We didn't put a stupid amount of effort into nuclear fission relative to how much it changed the world - I'm willing to bet that more cost has been put into r&d for office furniture than for the nuclear bomb.
Chess is a simple game of calculation, not a sign of intelligence. It merely reflects the ability to calculate, which is the strength of scalable computers. It just so happens that we came up with computers and they work well in this space - there's no telling of things we haven't discovered because we haven't thought to implement anything to do with them.
Sure, computers can write symphonies, but they are very far away from inventing something like a symphony. Which I would describe as something close to sapiogenesis.
I maintain that intelligence won't be cracked in my lifetime, knowing that I could look silly doing so. We can't even quantify what intelligence is, let alone begin to work towards it.","created_at":"2024-07-21T22:57:03Z","created_at_i":1721602623,"objectID":"41029075","parent_id":41019396,"story_id":41000846,"story_title":"Elephants use namelike calls","story_url":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:26:13Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"throwaway290"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["sapiom"],"value":"Sapiogenesis is pretty easy. I heard some people have to make an effort to avoid it."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Elephants use namelike calls"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_throwaway290","story_41000846"],"author":"throwaway290","comment_text":"Sapiogenesis is pretty easy. I heard some people have to make an effort to avoid it.","created_at":"2024-07-20T05:46:15Z","created_at_i":1721454375,"objectID":"41014369","parent_id":41011976,"story_id":41000846,"story_title":"Elephants use namelike calls","story_url":"https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/animal-naming-elephant-consciousness-language/679075/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:24:35Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":467,"nbPages":24,"page":0,"params":"query=Sapiom&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":6,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":63,"roundTrip":19},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":1},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":3,"total":3},"total":3},"total":3},"fetch":{"query":2,"total":3},"total":6},"query":"Sapiom","serverTimeMS":71}