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whpearson comments on Call for new SIAI Visiting Fellows, on a rolling basis - Less Wrong
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I think you're making the mistake of relying too heavily on our one sample of a general intelligence: the human brain. How do we know which parts to copy and which parts to discard? To draw an analogy to flight, how can we tell which parts of the brain are equivalent to a bird's beak and which parts are equivalent to wings? We need to understand intelligence before we can successfully implement it. Research on the human brain is expensive, requires going through a lot of red tape, and it's already being done by other groups. More importantly, planes do not fly because they are similar to birds. Planes fly because we figured out a theory of aerodynamics. Planes would fly just as well if no birds ever existed, and explaining aerodynamics doesn't require any talk of birds.
I don't see how we can hope to make significant progress on non-bird flight. How will we test whether our theories are correct or on the right path?
Just because you can't think of a way to solve a problem doesn't mean that a solution is intractable. We don't yet have the equivalent of a theory of aerodynamics for intelligence, but we do know that it is a computational process. Any algorithm, including whatever makes up intelligence, can be expressed mathematically.
As to the rest of your comment, I can't really respond to the questions about SIAI's behavior, since I don't know much about what they're up to.
Okay, let us say you want to make a test for intelligence, just as there was a test for the lift generated by a fixed wing.
As you are testing a computational system there are two things you can look at, the input-output relation and the dynamics of the internal system.
Looking purely at the IO relation is not informative, they can be fooled by GLUTs or compressed versions of the same. This is why the loebner prize has not lead to real AI in general. And making a system that can solve a single problem that we consider requires intelligence (such as chess), just gets you a system that can solve chess and does not generalize.
Contrast this with the air tunnels that the wright brothers had, they could test for lift which they knew would keep them up
If you want to get into the dynamics of the internals of the system they are divorced from our folk idea of intelligence which is problem solving (unlike the folk theory of flight, which connects nicely with lift from a wing). So what sort of dynamics should we look for?
If the theory of intelligence is correct the dynamics will have to be found in the human brain. Despite the slowness and difficulties of analysing it it. we are generating more data which we should be able to use to narrow down the dynamics.
How would you go about creating a testable theory of intelligence? Preferably without having to build a many person-year project each time you want to test your theory.
Intelligence is defined in terms of response to a variable environment - so you just use an environment with a wide range of different problems in it.