I see two related fundamental problems with the modern discourse around AI.
1) As with most words, there is no agreed upon definition on the term “intelligence”.
2) Intelligence is often used in a ranked comparison as a single dimension, e.g. “AI smarter than a human”.
When people use the word “intelligence” it seems people often assume it should include various analytical, problem skills, and learning skills. What’s less clear if it includes creative skills, communication skills, emotional intelligence, etc.
I think because people often like simplifying concepts and ranking people against each other, term “inteligence” started to be used as a single dimension—“your son is the smartest child in class”, “my boyfriend is much smarter than hers”, and of course “we will soon reach AI that is smarter than a human”.
I believe this type of thinking lead to the development and popularization of the IQ score at some point. The IQ score seems to be mainly out of the discource between thought leaders.
I believe in place of the term “intelligence” a less wrong and more precise & useful term for the discource should be “cognitive skills”, it much better represents that the concept involves multiple subjective dimensions rather than a single objective dimension.
This way we will more clearly evaluate various AIs by their various cognitive skills and not fall into a false sense that “intelligence” is a single clear dimension.
I don’t really have a problem with the term “intelligence” myself, but I see how it could carry anthropomorphic baggage for some people. However, I think the important parts are, in fact, analogous between AGI and humans. But I’m not attached to that particular word. One may as well say “competence” or “optimization power” without losing hold of the sense of “intelligence” we mean when we talk about AI.
In the study of human intelligence, it’s useful to break down the g factor (what IQ tests purport to measure) into fluid and crystallized intelligence. The former being the processing power required to learn and act in novel situations, and the latter being what has been learned and the ability to call upon and apply that knowledge.
“Cognitive skills” seems like a reasonably good framing for further discussion, but I think recent experience in the field contradicts your second problem, even given this framing. The Bitter Lesson says it well. Here are some relevant excerpts (it’s worth a read and not that long).
The biggest lesson that can be read from 70 years of AI research is that general methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective, and by a large margin. [...] Seeking an improvement that makes a difference in the shorter term, researchers seek to leverage their human knowledge of the domain, but the only thing that matters in the long run is the leveraging of computation.
[...] researchers always tried to make systems that worked the way the researchers thought their own minds worked—they tried to put that knowledge in their systems—but it proved ultimately counterproductive, and a colossal waste of researcher’s time, when, through Moore’s law, massive computation became available and a means was found to put it to good use.
[...] We have to learn the bitter lesson that building in how we think we think does not work in the long run. The bitter lesson is based on the historical observations that 1) AI researchers have often tried to build knowledge into their agents, 2) this always helps in the short term, and is personally satisfying to the researcher, but 3) in the long run it plateaus and even inhibits further progress, and 4) breakthrough progress eventually arrives by an opposing approach based on scaling computation by search and learning. The eventual success is tinged with bitterness, and often incompletely digested, because it is success over a favored, human-centric approach.
One thing that should be learned from the bitter lesson is the great power of general purpose methods, of methods that continue to scale with increased computation even as the available computation becomes very great. The two methods that seem to scale arbitrarily in this way are search and learning.
[...] the actual contents of minds are tremendously, irredeemably complex; we should stop trying to find simple ways to think about the contents of minds [...] these are part of the arbitrary, intrinsically-complex, outside world. They are not what should be built in, as their complexity is endless; instead we should build in only the meta-methods that can find and capture this arbitrary complexity. [...] We want AI agents that can discover like we can, not which contain what we have discovered.
Your conception of intelligence in the “cognitive skills” framing seems to be mainly about the crystalized sort. The knowledge and skills and application thereof. You see how complex and multidimensional that is and object to the idea that collections of such should be well-ordered, making concepts like “smarter-than human” if not wholly devoid of meaning, at least wrongheaded.
I agree that “competence” is ultimately a synonym for “skill”, but you’re neglecting the fluid intelligence. We already know how to give computers the only “cognitive skills” that matters: the ones that let you acquire all the others. The ability to learn, mainly. And that one can be brute forced with more compute. All the complexity and multidimensionality you see come when something profoundly simple, algorithms measured in mere kilobytes of source code, interacts with data from the complex and multidimensional real world.
In the idealized limit, what I call “intelligence” is AIXI. Though the explanation is long, the definition is not. It really is that simple. All else we call “intelligence” is mere approximation and optimization of that.
I see two related fundamental problems with the modern discourse around AI.
1) As with most words, there is no agreed upon definition on the term “intelligence”.
2) Intelligence is often used in a ranked comparison as a single dimension, e.g. “AI smarter than a human”.
When people use the word “intelligence” it seems people often assume it should include various analytical, problem skills, and learning skills. What’s less clear if it includes creative skills, communication skills, emotional intelligence, etc.
I think because people often like simplifying concepts and ranking people against each other, term “inteligence” started to be used as a single dimension—“your son is the smartest child in class”, “my boyfriend is much smarter than hers”, and of course “we will soon reach AI that is smarter than a human”.
I believe this type of thinking lead to the development and popularization of the IQ score at some point. The IQ score seems to be mainly out of the discource between thought leaders.
I believe in place of the term “intelligence” a less wrong and more precise & useful term for the discource should be “cognitive skills”, it much better represents that the concept involves multiple subjective dimensions rather than a single objective dimension.
This way we will more clearly evaluate various AIs by their various cognitive skills and not fall into a false sense that “intelligence” is a single clear dimension.
I don’t really have a problem with the term “intelligence” myself, but I see how it could carry anthropomorphic baggage for some people. However, I think the important parts are, in fact, analogous between AGI and humans. But I’m not attached to that particular word. One may as well say “competence” or “optimization power” without losing hold of the sense of “intelligence” we mean when we talk about AI.
In the study of human intelligence, it’s useful to break down the g factor (what IQ tests purport to measure) into fluid and crystallized intelligence. The former being the processing power required to learn and act in novel situations, and the latter being what has been learned and the ability to call upon and apply that knowledge.
“Cognitive skills” seems like a reasonably good framing for further discussion, but I think recent experience in the field contradicts your second problem, even given this framing. The Bitter Lesson says it well. Here are some relevant excerpts (it’s worth a read and not that long).
Your conception of intelligence in the “cognitive skills” framing seems to be mainly about the crystalized sort. The knowledge and skills and application thereof. You see how complex and multidimensional that is and object to the idea that collections of such should be well-ordered, making concepts like “smarter-than human” if not wholly devoid of meaning, at least wrongheaded.
I agree that “competence” is ultimately a synonym for “skill”, but you’re neglecting the fluid intelligence. We already know how to give computers the only “cognitive skills” that matters: the ones that let you acquire all the others. The ability to learn, mainly. And that one can be brute forced with more compute. All the complexity and multidimensionality you see come when something profoundly simple, algorithms measured in mere kilobytes of source code, interacts with data from the complex and multidimensional real world.
In the idealized limit, what I call “intelligence” is AIXI. Though the explanation is long, the definition is not. It really is that simple. All else we call “intelligence” is mere approximation and optimization of that.