IQ tests results for AI • Hacker News Board

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#111

Post by pama » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

lukan wrote: post #42

nsoonhui wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another component of this theory concerning g is that it's largely genetic, and immune to "intervention" AKA stability as you mentioned. See the classic "The Bell Curve" for a full exposition. Which makes me wonder what's the point of all the intervention in the form of teaching/parenting styles and whatnot, if g factor is nature and immutable by large? What's the logic of the educators here?

Assuming the assumption it is true (which I doubt) - there obviously is still value in teaching knowledge, so making students know more and practical skills, not produce more intelligent students. You can have a IQ of over 200, but if no one ever showed you how a computer works or gives you a manual, you still won't be productive with it. But I very much believe, intelligence is improvable and also degradable, just a…

IQ of 200 (or higher) do not exist according to the original definitions of this metric. You need a population of 219 billion or higher to have a 95% chance that a sample exists with 6.66 standard deviations away from the mean (assuming mean of 100 and std of 15). Ofc the tests are of limited value and things can be gamed, but it would be silly to try and identify samples that have no chance of existing.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#112

Post by FrustratedMonky » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #25

AI has a 140 “IQ” but understands nothing. That’s because AI does not understand anything: it just predicts the next token based on previous tokens and statistics. AI can give me five synonyms for any Latin word, because that’s just statistics, and it can regurgitate rules about metrical length of syllables, but it can’t give me synonyms matching a particular metrical pattern, because that would involve applying know…

That critique is half-right: large language models don’t “understand” in the human sense, but they do apply learned patterns across vast data in ways that often look like knowledge, even if it’s statistical pattern-matching. The real frontier is that these statistical engines can already combine rules, constraints, and creativity in ways their critics dismiss too quickly—making the line between “mere prediction” and “applied knowledge” fuzzier than it seems.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#113

Post by kcplate » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #79

bitwize wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't have to, it's already happening.

Is it discriminating towards life forms?

It probably should be if not already

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#114

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

cedilla wrote: post #41

nsoonhui wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another component of this theory concerning g is that it's largely genetic, and immune to "intervention" AKA stability as you mentioned. See the classic "The Bell Curve" for a full exposition. Which makes me wonder what's the point of all the intervention in the form of teaching/parenting styles and whatnot, if g factor is nature and immutable by large? What's the logic of the educators here?

"The Bell Curve" is, let's say, highly controversial and not a good introduction into the topic. Its claim that genetics are the main predictor of IQ, which was very weakly supported at the time, has been completely and undeniably refuted by science in the thirty years since it's publication.

It is not controversial at all. It was deemed inappropriate due the amount of 'wrongthink' it causes. We can argue about what followed and whether its claims have been nullified, but given how much conversations started with it, I sincerely doubt the argument that it should not be the introduction is reasonable. In a sense, it is the source of the debate.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#115

Post by breakyerself » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

nsoonhui wrote: post #31

gpt5 wrote: post #6

The way human IQ testing developed is that researchers noticed people who excel in one cognitive task tend to do well in others - the “positive manifold.” They then hypothesized a general factor, “g,” to explain this pattern. Early tests (e.g., Binet–Simon; later Stanford–Binet and Wechsler) sampled a wide range of tasks, and researchers used correlations and factor analysis to extract the common component, then norm…

Another component of this theory concerning g is that it's largely genetic, and immune to "intervention" AKA stability as you mentioned. See the classic "The Bell Curve" for a full exposition. Which makes me wonder what's the point of all the intervention in the form of teaching/parenting styles and whatnot, if g factor is nature and immutable by large? What's the logic of the educators here?

It's not genetic. The bell curve is garbage. It's a not a work of science. It's a work of political argumentation built on pretending to be science.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#116

Post by kcplate » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #34

testdelacc1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re definitely going to overfit on this, but this will be much better from a marketing perspective. Normies don’t know wtf an MMLU is, but they do know what IQ is and that 140 is a big number. Can’t wait for CEOs to start saying “why would we hire a 120 IQ person who works 9-5 with a lunch break when we can hire a 170 IQ worker who works 24x7 for half the cost??”

"Workers rejoice as model overfitted to score 170 on IQ test turns out to be incapable of performing basic tasks..."

There are a lot of people with high IQs that appear to be incapable of performing basic tasks too

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#117

Post by technothrasher » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

gpt5 wrote: post #6

The way human IQ testing developed is that researchers noticed people who excel in one cognitive task tend to do well in others - the “positive manifold.” They then hypothesized a general factor, “g,” to explain this pattern. Early tests (e.g., Binet–Simon; later Stanford–Binet and Wechsler) sampled a wide range of tasks, and researchers used correlations and factor analysis to extract the common component, then norm…

> The way human IQ testing developed is that researchers noticed people who excel in one cognitive task tend to do well in others

My son took an IQ test and it wouldn't score him because he breaks this assumption. He was getting 98% in some tasks and 2% in others. The psychologist giving him the test said it was unlikely enough pattern that they couldn't get an IQ result for him. He's been diagnosed with non-verbal learning disability, and this is apparently common for nvld folks.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#118

Post by FrustratedMonky » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

Right now LLMs are like students that study for years, then get their brains frozen into a textbook before they’re released. They can read new stuff during use (context window), but they don’t actually update their core weights on the fly. The “infinite context window” dream would mean every interaction is remembered and folded back into the brain, seamlessly blending inference (using the model) with training (reshaping it).

Within 2–3 years, we’ll see practical “personal LLMs” with effectively infinite memory via retrieval + lightweight updates, feeling continuous but not actually rewriting the core brain.

Within 5–10 years, we’ll likely get true continual-learning systems that can safely update weights live, with mechanisms to prune bad habits and compress knowledge—closer to how a human learns daily.

The rub is less can we and more should we: infinite memory + unfiltered feedback loops risks building a paranoid mirror that learns every user’s quirks, errors, and biases as gospel. In other words, your personal live-updating LLM might become your eccentric twin.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#119

Post by regularization » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

nsoonhui wrote: post #31

gpt5 wrote: post #6

The way human IQ testing developed is that researchers noticed people who excel in one cognitive task tend to do well in others - the “positive manifold.” They then hypothesized a general factor, “g,” to explain this pattern. Early tests (e.g., Binet–Simon; later Stanford–Binet and Wechsler) sampled a wide range of tasks, and researchers used correlations and factor analysis to extract the common component, then norm…

Another component of this theory concerning g is that it's largely genetic, and immune to "intervention" AKA stability as you mentioned. See the classic "The Bell Curve" for a full exposition. Which makes me wonder what's the point of all the intervention in the form of teaching/parenting styles and whatnot, if g factor is nature and immutable by large? What's the logic of the educators here?

> concerning g is that it's largely genetic, and immune to "intervention" AKA stability

Biology seems to be the destination for smuggled in quasi-religious beliefs. Lysenkoism, creationism and in the case of a segment (or more?) of the western professional-managerial class, this kind of Bell Curveism.

In the past people were satisfied with the divine apotheosis of people into a superior Brahmin class, or chosen people, or even in more modern times a Calvinistic elect, which this is an attempt to smuggle in as a secular, "scuentific" basis.

If we were watching elementary particles smash together in an accelerator, the idea that a brain could be boiled down to a number and ranked in order, and said this be due to differential genes and such would be seen as absurd. Especially considering human behavioral modernity happen two to three thousand generations ago, if one knows a genetic time scale. For our version of biological Lysenkoism or creationism, this all goes out the window though. Speaking of Lysenkoism, it is akin to the Marxist idea of false consciousness - the people who believe such ideas can see the errors of Lysenkoism or creationism, but the crank idea tied to their particular system makes a lot of sense to them.

I think of al-Andalus in Spain the 1450s, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Until a few centuries ago, Europe could barely keep itself free of Arab or Turk rule (and often didn't). Change back a few centuries and this would be about the genetic superiority of the Arab brain over the Caucasian. It's all quite silly.

Re: IQ tests results for AI

#120

Post by breakyerself » Sun, Aug 17, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC

nialse wrote: post #63

cedilla wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Bell Curve" is, let's say, highly controversial and not a good introduction into the topic. Its claim that genetics are the main predictor of IQ, which was very weakly supported at the time, has been completely and undeniably refuted by science in the thirty years since it's publication.

Do note that The Bell Curve is not considered controversial in general. The part about race and genetics is. Also genes being the sole predictor of IQ is not an accurate description of the book’s premise.

No the whole book is controversial. It's a political argument for dismantling the welfare state disguised as a review of science. They laundered a bunch of work by racial eugenicists along with a bunch of other junk science methodology.

https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo?si=bzVMwGU4XjPrk4sr