The Recovery, Walking, Sitting Up, and AI Activities.
I ask for a pass on spelling and grammar this week; I am well-medicated. As a result, I am dependent on my AI to check all my work.
The Recovery
My friends, I am doing swell. However, it's one thing to be fine in Keck Hospital, where the staff wait on your every need and pour your ice water. Sitting up in a chair at home and pouring my juice is a challenge. Everything still hurts. I don't have an IV pole to hang on to as I walk around. All the holes and ports they stitched into me are still open and leaking one thing or another. But like I said, I am feeling much better compared to previous rounds of surgery. This time I took advantage of my past experiences. Right after ostomy surgery, I asked for an extra day of no food to give my systems a chance to wake up on their own. During previous surgeries, I started on food too soon: a horrible GI tube down the nose into the stomach alien extraction experience that I did not want to repeat. Going slow with the food saved me an extra week in the hospital. My specialist stopped by to check on me, and she is someone who can tell how you are doing just by looking at you. She said I didn't look like someone who belonged in the hospital.
WALKING
The first morning home from the hospital, I felt great. I got up and started walking the dog around the block. It was the slowest walk in recorded history. What was I thinking? I felt immense satisfaction making it around the block. Then I slept the rest of the day. That was Monday. Today I made it around the block and more, and walking is transformative when the option is lying down.
Sitting up
I did my laundry on Friday. Also, I had a zoom call with the ostomy nurse to sort out my new ostomy; I can last about an hour in a chair before I droop like a Play-do statue. We have recliners that are a cheat half lying down, so I am trying to sit in a chair more than using the recliner. I need a little extra padding because one of the things I lost this time around was my "rosebud." There is no more farting in my life. My husband and I started calling it the Hollywood butt. Everyone will want to have one now, like a fashion accessory. If I was going into orbit or on a trip to Mars, I think I would want a Hollywood butt. All the bits of me I was trying to nurture back to health this last year failed to show any signs of life. Out they came.
Activities
I did gain 27 cm, 9", of healthy functional intestine back to the plus side. It means I expect I won't need weekly IV infusions to keep me hydrated. Recovery is expected to take four more weeks. I will update you on returning to daily activities and if I can make it up the hill to the observatory before Halloween.
AI, What I have been reading
I have been reading in my interest area of artificial intelligence. For over 50 years we have wondered if machines could think. We are immediately hobbled by the follow-up question what counts as thinking? Up to now we felt that if a machine could pass a test, that would give us an answer. It came down to having a machine fool someone long enough in a question-and-answer session to pass as a natural person. Now we have devices that can fool us, ask us questions, and solve our online ordering and banking issues. Yes, machines can think in the 1940s mindset of passing a test.
Now the question of what counts as thinking is splitting into levels of functionality. Currently, we have machines that can solve problems in a narrow band of cognition. For example we trust the machine learning app on our phones to find driving directions and narrow down items we want to order at Amazon. The next level of functionality is a test of general intelligence. General intelligence is what we recognize in animals and people. The next level of machine intelligence will be obvious starting with a machines ability to act like a dog or a mouse and do several things simultaneously to pursue a purpose. The skill set would progress to a system that could function as well as a person. That will be something. Look for it in the next 50 years.
I think we will learn more about how our brains work and build a machine that can emulate our own mechanical functions we will recognize general intelligence in a machine or its software .