1. Pattern Recognition
http://imgur.com/gallery/3MeIItD We're getting to the stage now when computers are catching us up. They've pretty much always been good at crunching numbers, we've come to terms with that, but we're also starting to develop machines that can think, feel and use creativity. So, now that computers are stepping on a few more toes than they used to, is there anything that we're still better at? Thankfully, yes, and it's something that you might imagine computers would be good at: Pattern Recognition. Sure, computers are pretty good at spotting completely regular sequences, but when things start to get a bit more ambiguous, they have trouble picking out the relevant information and discarding the rest. Think about those annoying CAPTCHA things that websites make you do to prove that you're a human. It shows you a distorted jumble of numbers and letters. You're able to see almost straight away what those letters are, because you're able to think more flexibly about it. For a computer, if it doesn't match almost exactly, then it's not a match. Our talent for pattern recognition may actually be a little
too good, as we even tend to spot patterns that aren't there, such as the
face on Mars or
Jesus on toast (shotgun that band name).
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