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MrHen comments on Open Thread: March 2010 - Less Wrong
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Thoughts about intelligence.
My hope is that some altruistic person will read this comment, see where I am wrong and point me to the literature I need to read. Thanks in advance.
I've been thinking about the problem of general intelligence. Before going too deeply I wanted to see if I had a handle on what intelligence is period.
It seems to me that the people sitting in the library with me now are intelligent and that my pencil is not. So what is the minimum my pencil would have to do before I suddenly thought that it was intelligent?
Moving alone doesn't count. If I drop the pencil it will fall towards the table. You could say that I caused the pencil to move, but I am not sure this isn't begging the question.
Now suppose the first time I dropped the pencil and it fell to the floor. Now I go to drop it a second time but I do it over the table. However, the pencil flies around the table and hits the same spot on the floor.
Now its got my attention. But maybe its something about the table. So I drop the pencil but put my hand in the way. Still the pencil goes around my hand.
I put my foot over the spot on the floor and drop the pencil. It flies around my foot and then into the crevice between my foot and the floor and gets stuck. As soon as I lift my foot the pencil goes to the same spot.
I believe I should now conclude that my pencil is intelligent. This has something to do with the following facts.
1) The pencil kept going to the same spot as if it had a "goal"
2) The pencil was able to respond to "obstacles" in ways not predicted by my original simply theory of pencil behavior.
I believe that I would say the pencil is more intelligent if it could pass through more "complicated" obstacles.
Here are some of my basic problems
1) What is a "goal" beyond what my intuition says
2) Similarly what is an "obstacle"
3) And what is "complicated"
I have some sense that "obstacle" is related to reducing the probability that the goal will be reached
I have some s that complicated has to do with the degree to which the probability is reduced.
Thoughts? Suggestions for readings?
If I were standing there catching the pencil and directing it to the spot on the floor, you wouldn't consider the pencil intelligent. The behavior observed is not pointing to the pencil in particular being intelligent.
Just my two cents.
I don't know anything about the concept of intelligence being defined as being able to pursue goals through complicated obstacles. If I had to guess at the missing piece it would probably be some form of self-referential goal making. Namely, this takes the form of the word, "want." I want to go to this spot on the floor. I can ignore a goal but it is significantly harder to ignore a want.
At some point, my wants begin to dictate and create other wants. If I had to start pursing a definition of intelligence, I would probably start here. But I don't know anything about the field so this could have already been tried and failed.
Well I would consider the Pencil-MrHen system as intelligent. I think further investigation would be required to determine that the pencil is not intelligent when it is not connected to MrHen, but that MrHen is intelligent when not connected to the pencil. It then makes sense to say that the intelligence originates from MrHen.
The problem with the self-referential from my perspective is that it presumes a self.
It seems to me that ideas like "I" and "want" graph humanness on to other objects.
So, I want to see what happens if I try to divorce all of my anthrocentric assumptions about self, desires, wants, etc. I want to measure a thing and then by a set of criteria declare that thing to be intelligent.
Sure, that makes perfect sense. I haven't really given this a whole lot of thought; you are getting the fresh start. :)
The self in self-referential isn't implied to be me or you or any form of "I". Whatever source of identity you feel comfortable with can use the term self-referential. In the case of your intelligent pencil, it very well may be the case that the pencil is self-updating in order to achieve what you are calling a goal.
A "want" can describe nonhuman behavior, so I am not convinced the term is a problem. It does seem that I am beginning to place atypical restrictions on its definition, however, so perhaps "goal" would work better in the end.
The main points I am working with:
Please note that I am not trying to disagree (or agree) with you. I am just talking because I think the subject is interesting and I haven't really given it much thought. I am certainly no authority on the subject. If I am obviously wrong somewhere, please let me know.