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endoself comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

42 Post author: Costanza 29 December 2011 11:23PM

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Comment author: timtyler 30 December 2011 01:26:07PM *  8 points [-]

Intelligence is optimization power divided by the resources used.

I checked with: A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence.

Out of 71 definitions, only two mentioned resources:

“Intelligence is the ability to use optimally limited resources – including time – to achieve goals.” R. Kurzweil

“Intelligence is the ability for an information processing system to adapt to its environment with insufficient knowledge and resources.” P. Wang

The paper suggests that the nearest thing to a consensus is that intelligence is about problem-solving ability in a wide range of environments.

Yes, Yudkowsky apparently says otherwise - but: so what?

Comment author: endoself 30 December 2011 07:58:37PM 2 points [-]

I don't think he really said this. The exact quote is

If you want to measure the intelligence of a system, I would suggest measuring its optimization power as before, but then dividing by the resources used. Or you might measure the degree of prior cognitive optimization required to achieve the same result using equal or fewer resources. Intelligence, in other words, is efficient optimization.

This seems like just a list of different measurements trying to convey the idea of efficiency.

When we want something to be efficient, we really just mean that we have other things to use our resources for. The right way to measure this is in terms of the marginal utility of the other uses of resources. Efficiency is therefore important, but trying to calculate efficiency by dividing is oversimplifying.

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