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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

Just reminding Google that snakes can eat elephants so please stop confusing them with hats:

Adult neural networks cannot understand that.

I don't know how it sounds exactly for a native English speaker, but saying "adult neural networks" seems to give the intelligence trait to some piece of software.

Times are changing...

In case you don't know the cultural reference, the joke is that kids can easily see that the hat is obviously a snake that has eaten an elephant, while adults only see a hat.

It's told in the first chapter of the famous childrens book, "the little prince"

Argh "the little prince".. Here's what happens when you live your passion for computers, programs, etc. 24/24 : you miss the good books :-)

I'm not sure where you're getting those extra 17 days in your week but my god please share the secret with us.

I'm pretty sure you should read 24/24 as a fraction instead of a tuple. But I guess your neural network is more trained on the other case.

You're missing a cultural reference. http://www.thelittleprince.com/work/the-story/

Chapter 1 of The Little Prince from Wikipedia:

> The narrator explains that, as a young boy, he once drew a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant in its stomach; however, every adult who saw the picture would mistakenly interpret it as a drawing of a hat. Whenever the narrator would try to correct this confusion, he was ultimately advised to set aside drawing and take up a more practical or mature hobby. The narrator laments the crass materialism of contemporary society and the lack of creative understanding displayed by adults. As noted by the narrator, he could have had a great career as a painter, but this opportunity was crushed by the misunderstanding of the adults.

I was going to link the book because I thought it was on the Public Domain, but apparently not in every country [1]. Also, the site you reference seems to be purposely misguiding visitors by omission about the book's licensing status [2].

[1] http://www.communia-association.org/2015/01/23/the-little-pr...

[2] http://www.thelittleprince.com/licensing/

>saying "adult neural networks" seems to give the intelligence trait to some piece of software

Ignoring the cultural reference everyone here is talking about:

How do you get that perception? We apply the adjective adult to animals to whom we (rightfully or wrongfully) don't attribute intelligence, and even to other lifeforms which we usually categorize as non-sentient (e.g. adult trees).

I think it is perfectly legitimate to assign the adjective adult to a neural network that has either left the training phase, or that is only undergoing marginal changes in further training. This seems to be mostly in line with how the word adult is used in other contexts.

Not that I'm opposed to calling software intelligent, in fact I think it would be weird if we couldn't call something intelligent just because it's silicon-based instead of being based on organic neurons. I just find it odd that you associate "adult" with intelligence at all.

Well, you're right. But somehow, my mind had wired "adult" to this kind of definition (wikipedia) : "Biologically, an adult is a human being or other organism that has reached sexual maturity". And therefore, I associated that to "organism" (I didn't think about animals, but I'd venture to say that when compared to computers, many familiar animals like a dog are more intelligent, but that's a debate, I understand that).

So in this sense, I found it surprising to associate a word that I use for "living"/biological things to a digital thing; specially in the context of A.I.

Maybe the term adult is, for me at least, very loaded with lots of meanings that go far behind the simple notion of "maturity"

Or, it's a site that lets you train neural nets using pornography, then see what pictures/videos result from it when you start killing off neurons.

Setting the "Little Prince" reference aside, "adult neural network" sounds like porn to me.

Spoiler: They're talking about the first page of The Little Prince.

To be honest, there was a little kid who drew a snake eating an elephant too. The teacher thought it was a hat as well.

Love Le Petite Prince! Read it both in French and English.

I will try it in French, I've read it in Spanish, English, Italian and Japanese so far (the latter barely) so I think French would be a great addition and I probably will understand it being a Spaniard and all. Thanks for the recommendation

You didn't draw the tusks, that's why.

It's indeed difficult to draw when trapped inside an adult perspective.

Dessine-moi un mouton...

What if the snake swallowed a really big hat?

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