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Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#12Careful... you're on the verge here of realizing that intelligence is not a single-dimensional thing and that 'g' is bullshit.
Intelligence isn't a single-dimensional thing, but it seems pretty absurd to claim that there's no general factor at all. Could it really be meaningless to say that someone's smart?
It totally could be meaningless. I think there is this conflation of two thing. I don't think "General Intelligence" is a thing. We don't have it, AIs probably won't. We have a collection of specialty neurological adaptations that are useful but certainly not adapted for "any" use. Even if they can be composed to be more powerful, there are a lot of limits to it.
This doesn't mean that AI won't get smarter than us at everything we can do, but based on the fact we are not getting much smarter we have to ask: is that just a limit of biology? Or are there scaling limits to Intelligence? Organizations and societies are a great example of the scaling limits of "Intelligence", they bypass a lot of human limits to make gesalt intelligent agents more reliable and less prone to certain biases, but generally not meaningfully "smarter" than any individual, just more patient and consistent. There are clear limits on the scalability Intelligence, just throwing more computational power at the problem isn't enough for runaway-agi
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intelligence isn't a single-dimensional thing, but it seems pretty absurd to claim that there's no general factor at all. Could it really be meaningless to say that someone's smart?
It's like saying a car is fast. Sure, the car is fast. Is it also reliable, efficient, aesthetically pleasing, comfortable, or affordable? How does it handle? How does it do off-road? Can it fly? Can it operate underwater? Real world fitness landscapes are complex and multidimensional. My comment was a little snarky because while I like this site quite a bit for many reasons I do get a little fatigued by the prevalen…
I agree with this sentiment - single-dimensional intelligence is usually reactive, instinctual, applies to a very specific event or context. I believe human-level/multi-dimensional intelligence is the ability to extrapolate/abstract ideas from many different single-dimensional understandings.
I think regardless of whether or not AI is or ever will be multi-dimensional, that will depend on its ability to consider and make conclusions from many different single-dimensions - libraries if you will.
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#14Careful... you're on the verge here of realizing that intelligence is not a single-dimensional thing and that 'g' is bullshit.
"Chimps have better short term memory than humans, even on human oriented tasks... Short term memory is an important dimension of intelligence. By Kelly's argument, humans are not smarter than chimps; indeed, he would claim that "smarter than chimpanzee" is a meaningless concept. This is cold comfort to the chimps whose species survive only because we deign to allow it. It is colder comfort still to all those species we have already wiped out. It's also cold comfort to humans who might be worried about being wiped out by machines." -- Human Compatible by Stuart Russell, page 148
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#15Ant level intelligence I'd be happy with. "Colony you may now clean up my kitchen table and do the dishes. Thanks"
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not bullshit to notice that a bunch of different abilities tend to be highly correlated. That’s all g is. What is bullshit is the formal theory of multiple intelligences, which is largely PC-inspired pseudoscience and does not account for the correlation between separate areas.
Athletic ability (real time kinetic intelligence) and math ability are highly correlated? A car's speed and its ability to drive off-road are highly correlated? Rocket thrust and specific impulse are highly correlated? (Hint: these are inversely correlated.) I didn't come to this through PC. I came to it through a basic understanding of learning and optimization.
Athletic ability isn't intelligence. Intelligence may be a part of it (c.f. Wayne Gretzky's quote "skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been") but strength, speed, and stamina aren't.
Burmese pythons are way stronger than humans yet I doubt anyone would call them more intelligent. Mantis shrimp have way faster reflexes and their vision is way more sophisticated than ours yet they're not more intelligent as well.
There is a lot of debate over the definition of intelligence but one thing most definitions have in common is that it is general. A human being can play the piano, solve an integral, write a novel, compose a photograph, and many many more things. We do all of these things using the same "muscle", our brain. It turns out that some people's brains are faster at being able to learn all of these myriad tasks. That's all there is to it.
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Athletic ability (real time kinetic intelligence) and math ability are highly correlated? A car's speed and its ability to drive off-road are highly correlated? Rocket thrust and specific impulse are highly correlated? (Hint: these are inversely correlated.) I didn't come to this through PC. I came to it through a basic understanding of learning and optimization.
Athletic ability isn't intelligence. Intelligence may be a part of it (c.f. Wayne Gretzky's quote "skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been") but strength, speed, and stamina aren't. Burmese pythons are way stronger than humans yet I doubt anyone would call them more intelligent. Mantis shrimp have way faster reflexes and their vision is way more sophisticated than ours yet they're not more intelligent a…
> That's all there is to it.
I think that's the main point where we disagree. I think there's a hell of a lot more to it.
I remember noticing when I was in school that while I could learn a variety of things, there were definitely subjects that were a lot easier for me and others in which I'd struggle no matter how hard I worked. I also observed other people with very different profiles of easy and hard subjects.
I barely passed organic chemistry. I studied hard, but it just would not "take." I had a friend who breezed through it. Anything that involved writing though? I'd breeze through it. I could get As in any class that involved understanding concepts and writing about them with almost no effort. This same friend struggled to write an essay.
I actually dropped out of vertebrate anatomy. Tons and tons of clades and names for discrete things. I found a way to adjust my major requirements to avoid taking it. Otherwise I would have had to switch majors. There is no way I could have passed that class with any amount of tutoring.
It's like I have a photographic memory for concepts, but can't recall discrete facts. I kept looking for the underlying patterns in organic chemistry but it turns out we don't understand it well enough to have those... we just know a ton of reactions that do things. I flounder badly in subjects whose facts can't be attached to an abstract conceptual framework, but I can read about a concept once and I understand it forever.
As a programmer I really love IDEs with "code insight" and other features that basically consult the documentation for you in real time. I get everything about the concepts and algorithms but can never remember the order of arguments on memcpy() even after using it for 20 years. I know memcpy() is there and what it does conceptually though, so it's fine since the IDE will show me which argument goes first.
My point is that different people who are "smart" can differ radically in their ability profile.
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Athletic ability isn't intelligence. Intelligence may be a part of it (c.f. Wayne Gretzky's quote "skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been") but strength, speed, and stamina aren't. Burmese pythons are way stronger than humans yet I doubt anyone would call them more intelligent. Mantis shrimp have way faster reflexes and their vision is way more sophisticated than ours yet they're not more intelligent a…
> That's all there is to it. I think that's the main point where we disagree. I think there's a hell of a lot more to it. I remember noticing when I was in school that while I could learn a variety of things, there were definitely subjects that were a lot easier for me and others in which I'd struggle no matter how hard I worked. I also observed other people with very different profiles of easy and hard subjects. I b…
Yeah I think the notion of a scalar intelligence metric won't stand the test of time. Some people are born with golden hands and excel at everything they touch while others are over-achievers in narrow subjects only. Just think what a scalar intelligence concept would mean: there is only one single gene that gives rise to all of the variance in intelligence among humans. This can't be it, there are likely dozens if not hundreds of genes involved and each gene regulates a different aspect of brain function.
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#19Surprised I haven’t come across this analogy before. Thinking about it now, ‘Animal-like abilities’ is a much better analogy in the context of the general public. It also helps ground scientists in thinking deeply about the difference between human and animal intelligence (some animals can use tools).
This is vague but it was a while ago... some researcher was trying to make AI more accessible to the public by downplaying high expectations. She represented it as a cartoon dog, amiable, willing, but evidently none too bright. I believe it was no more than an experiment, though a clever one. Ring anyone's bell?
Re: Human-Level Intelligence or Animal-Like Abilities? (2018)
#20Careful... you're on the verge here of realizing that intelligence is not a single-dimensional thing and that 'g' is bullshit.
It’s not bullshit to notice that a bunch of different abilities tend to be highly correlated. That’s all g is. What is bullshit is the formal theory of multiple intelligences, which is largely PC-inspired pseudoscience and does not account for the correlation between separate areas.
I'd prefer you didn't call it bullshit without some backup.