Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
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Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
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Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#2What's the point? No matter how detailed and comprehensive the instructions and steps by the AI, you still don't get a PBJ sandwich to eat. You have to go to the kitchen and do it yourself.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#3What's the point? No matter how detailed and comprehensive the instructions and steps by the AI, you still don't get a PBJ sandwich to eat. You have to go to the kitchen and do it yourself.
It’s a reference to a famous YouTube video[0] about how to write instructions that can be followed.
One of the most important things a programmer needs to do is learn how to tell a computer how to do something. It’s a surprisingly hard skill because each step is way more complicated and has way more variables to go through.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#4I saw a YouTube Short of a teacher demonstrating this to her young students. Of course the kids are laughing lots at the results of her literally enacting their instructions and exaggerating the missing necessary info. But I bet they came out with a far more technical thought process.
This should be part of the curriculum.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#5i once had this "make a PB&J" as part of a written take-home interview.
i knew the schtick -- no matter how precise and complete you are, there is always the possibility for another little gotcha. and that makes it absolute rubbish for a take home because... how much detail do i need to go into to satisfy the manager reviewing this? i think i wrote a couple paragraphs and ended with a little rant about how i know how this problem works and it'd work better in person. i don't know how much they expected somebody to write.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#6Although this is a facetious take, instructing a robot to follow recipes is a fantastic introduction to coding. I added a visual scripting layer to Overcooked so kids can program robots to make all sorts of dishes (Sushi, Pasta, Cakes etc.)
This is part of a club to teach kids coding, creativity and digital literacy.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#7It’s funny, when I’ve seen this demonstrated, it’s basically literally impossible to get the right result because the test maker doesn’t define an instruction set that you can rely on. They will deliberately screw up whatever instructions you give them no matter how detailed. A computer has a defined ISA that is specified in terms of behavior. A compiler transforms a language with higher level abstractions into this low-level language. I’ve never seen this “test” done with any similar affordance, which doesn’t really teach anything.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#8It’s almost like we need some deterministic set of instructions that can be fed to a machine and followed reliably? Like… I don’t know… a “programming language”?
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#9When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my elementary school music teacher did this same exercise with us, except the goal was to draw a musical staff and the first 3 notes of Jingle Bells (or something along those lines). I can still remember how much fun I thought it was.
Re: Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?
#10Demonstrations like this are a regular feature of the Japanese educational TV show "Texico", which teaches logical thinking with the specific goal of preparing young children for programming.
I highly recommend it. It's extremely well made, and quite entertaining even for adults.
It's available in English, 10 minutes per episode, no subscription required: