[asdff]

> The fact that neural networks have been the only way we've been able to solve a lot of problems, which approximate the way that the human brain learns, is pretty strong evidence of this.

Chances are a lot of machine learning implementations can be replaced with just "boring" statistical models and achieve more power.

OTOH plenty of creatures don't need to learn. Does a mosquito need to learn? No, it spawns thousands of offspring and doesn't live very long. The high spawn rate means you have a wide variety of natural mutations in your offspring, meaning one or a few of them are likely to have higher fitness in a given niche. It doesn't matter if most die if a few go on to survive. This is the strategy many organisms use to dominate the world in far greater numbers than our own species.

[version_five]

> Chances are a lot of machine learning implementations can be replaced with just "boring" statistical models and achieve more power.

This is of course true, but the innovation in ML is not that a neural network (or whatever model) is equivalent to something else, it's finding the weights in the first place.

[notshift]

I sure hope we don't have mass-reproducing space mosquitos in our future.

[asdff]

It's OK, space has too much radiation for things to migrate off world unshielded. Except if you are a tardigrade though, but the reasons for them being like that are due to the types of niches they occupy on earth. Mosquitos on earth that have some sort of space proof shielding in their exoskeleton would probably be quickly outcompeted by those more fit mosquitos that don't have to invest resources into this space proof exoskeleton.