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Dr. Treadwell walked back and forth across the platform at the front of the auditorium.
Her steps were slow and even, almost hypnotic.
Credit: Scott Cawthon
Your eyes deceive you every day, filling in the blanks for you in a world of sensory overload.
An image of dizzying geometric detail lit up the canvas screen behind her.
When I say sensory overload I mean that quite literally.
Scholastic
It does that based on your experiences, and your expectation of what is nor- mal.
The things we are familiar with are the things we canfor the most partignore.
You may be quite thankful for this phenomenon, depending on the habits of your roommate.
The class tittered dutifully, then became quiet as the image of another multicolored design flashed onto the screen.
The professor gave a hint of a smile and continued.
Your mind creates motion when there is none.
It fills in colors and trajectories based on what youve seen before, and calculates what youshouldbe seeing now.
Another image flashed onto the overhead screen.
A hundred pencils scribbled all at once, filling the lecture hall with a sound like scurrying mice.
Its why when you enter a house for the first time you experience a moment of dizziness.
Your mind is taking in more than usual.
The next time you enter that same house, youll already know where you are.
Charlie!An urgent voice whispered her name, inches from her ear.
She was staring straight ahead at the display at the front of the lecture hall.
It was like she skimmed the text in her head, reading out a few words here and there.
Most of the students in her robotics class found it maddening, but Charlie liked it.
It made the lesson kind of like doing a puzzle.
The screen flashed again, displaying an assortment of mechanical parts and a diagram of an eye.
This is what you must re-create.
Dr. Treadwell stepped back from the image, turning to look at it with the class.
Basic artificial intelli- gence is all about sensory control.
You wont be dealing with a mind that can filter these things out for itself.
You must design programs that recognize basic shapes, while discard- ing unimportant information.
Lets start by looking at some examples of basic shape recognition.
The gesture cost her a moment, put her half a step behind the professor.
She hurried to catch up, anxious not to miss a single line.
If she could tie the new facts to things she already knew, shed retain it much more easily.
Now the whole class would have to stop while Treadwell went back to explain a simple concept.
Charlie let her mind wander, sketching absently in the margins of her notebook.
It felt like a lifetime since she last saw him.
Sometimes, it felt like shed seen him yesterday, as if the last year hadnt passed.
But of course it had, and everything had changed for Charlie once again.
That May, the night of her eighteenth birthday, the dreams had begun.
These dreams were different.
When she woke, she was physically exhausted: not just drained but sore, her muscles weak.
Her hands were stiff and aching, like theyd been clenched into fists for hours.
Suddenly, from nowhere, she would sense him: Sammy, her lost twin brother, was near.
Now she was searching for him in the darkness, calling his name.
It was smooth and cold, metal.
She couldnt see it, but she hit it hard with one fist and it echoed.
she would call, hitting harder.
She beat her fists against the barricade until they hurt.
He was there; she knew it as surely as if he were a part of herself.
She knew in those dreams that he was present.
Worse, when she was awake, she knew he was not there.
