I suspect a key piece which is missing from our definition of knowledge is a strong (enough) formalisation of the notion of computational work. In a lot of these cases the knowledge exists as a sort of crystallized computation.
The difference between a chemistry textbook and a rock is that building a predictive model of chemistry by reading a textbook requires much less computational effort than by studying the reactions in a rock.
A ship plotting a shoreline requires very little computational work to extract that map.
The computer with a camera requires very little work to extract the data as to how the room looked. Studying the computer case to get that information requires a lot of computational work.
I don’t know how you’d check if a system was accumulating knowledge based on this, but perhaps doing a lot of computational work and storing the results as information might be evidence.
I suspect a key piece which is missing from our definition of knowledge is a strong (enough) formalisation of the notion of computational work. In a lot of these cases the knowledge exists as a sort of crystallized computation.
The difference between a chemistry textbook and a rock is that building a predictive model of chemistry by reading a textbook requires much less computational effort than by studying the reactions in a rock.
A ship plotting a shoreline requires very little computational work to extract that map.
The computer with a camera requires very little work to extract the data as to how the room looked. Studying the computer case to get that information requires a lot of computational work.
I don’t know how you’d check if a system was accumulating knowledge based on this, but perhaps doing a lot of computational work and storing the results as information might be evidence.