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It's totally general in the sense that we can logically approach arbitrary problem types and there is nothing known that we can't approach with our tools of int

It's totally general in the sense that we can logically approach arbitrary problem types and there is nothing known that we can't approach with our tools of intelligence, so to speak. That doesn't necessarily mean that we are actually good at solving those problems or that there isn't an upper level of difficulty that we will just not be able to solve practically, but we are definitely able to approach all classes of problems in general. By contrast, a chess ai can't do anything but solve for chess states. A diffusion NN can't do anything but create images, or something that is mathematically analogous. We can in principle do anything any conceivable specialized AI can do, even if a lot slower or error prone. Therefor, we have general intelligence.

dbspin 4y ago
> there is nothing known that we can't approach with our tools of intelligence, so to speak. Such things may necessarily be unknowable. If there are classes of observations that we are unable to make, or problems that we are unable to comprehend, its absolutely plausible that they would be cognitive blindspots. In fact there's a whole theoretical strand in cognitive science / ontology that suggests this. We perceive and act only against a model of the world tuned for fitness rather than accuracy. i.e.: we are not perceiving objective reality at any scale, but rather a mental representation of it which is tailored to fitness. This is deeply unintuitive, but of course it would be since it relates to the limits on our ability to intuit.
- jvm___ 4y ago
  What's your definition of fitness in this case? Survival of the fittest?
  - dbspin 4y ago
    Here's a background on some of the arguments - https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...
- fartsucker69 4y ago
  even hypothetically this is only partially possible. for sure what you talk about would be something that is purely an abstract / logical problem, because if something we effectively "can't think" originates somehow in the real world, we would be able to observe it and realize that we can't reason about it. and even when we have exhausted everything there is to know in the universe and solved every type of problem, we still can't be sure that there isn't a magic gap that we can't see using our intelligence. but this is completely a god of the gaps argument, i.e. a religious argument, and thus not worth considering until we get actual evidence of such a thing.
  - ptrhvns 4y ago
    This is incorrect. It’s not hypothetical, is fully possible, and is very much in the scientific arena. Evolutionary game theory, among other tools, has been used to demonstrate that it's highly probably that human beings do not perceive objective reality as it truly is. See “The Case Against Reality” by Donald Hoffman. Edit: more precise language.
  - dbspin 4y ago
    This has already been replied to but no, this is not a 'God of the gaps' argument. As I mentioned it's a thread in ongoing research on cognition. There's a good summary of some of the perspectives in this space here - https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...
cameronh90 4y ago
I've long thought there is some sort of intelligence parallel to Turing Completeness: given enough time, resources and experimentation, it can figure anything out. At least at a super-organism level, humanity has achieved that, in my opinion. However, I'm not sure whether any individual human can be said to meet that criteria. Perhaps some exceptional examples meet that criteria, or maybe there is some vague IQ cut-off where any human could meet that criteria if given a really long time to study a problem - but I'm fairly certain that many humans don't meet that criteria individually. Obviously this isn't a mathematical or scientifically provable statement, just a general concept that gets a bit fuzzy at the edges. What I would add is a lot of people seem to judge AI overly harshly compared to humans, perhaps comparing them against humanity as a super-organism or at least an above average human. Sure, ChatGPT makes weird mistakes and can't write code as well as me, but compared to many people I know, it's a far better programmer and possibly less error prone in general. Too many people are like "ha it can't solve this differential equation", but my mum doesn't even know what a differential equation is, and thought that the moon was the sun at night. At least ChatGPT knows the moon is a distinct celestial body to the sun.

dbspin 4y ago

> there is nothing known that we can't approach with our tools of intelligence, so to speak. Such things may necessarily be unknowable. If there are classes of observations that we are unable to make, or problems that we are unable to comprehend, its absolutely plausible that they would be cognitive blindspots. In fact there's a whole theoretical strand in cognitive science / ontology that suggests this. We perceive and act only against a model of the world tuned for fitness rather than accuracy. i.e.: we are not perceiving objective reality at any scale, but rather a mental representation of it which is tailored to fitness. This is deeply unintuitive, but of course it would be since it relates to the limits on our ability to intuit.

jvm___ 4y ago
What's your definition of fitness in this case? Survival of the fittest?
- dbspin 4y ago
  Here's a background on some of the arguments - https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...
fartsucker69 4y ago
even hypothetically this is only partially possible. for sure what you talk about would be something that is purely an abstract / logical problem, because if something we effectively "can't think" originates somehow in the real world, we would be able to observe it and realize that we can't reason about it. and even when we have exhausted everything there is to know in the universe and solved every type of problem, we still can't be sure that there isn't a magic gap that we can't see using our intelligence. but this is completely a god of the gaps argument, i.e. a religious argument, and thus not worth considering until we get actual evidence of such a thing.
- ptrhvns 4y ago
  This is incorrect. It’s not hypothetical, is fully possible, and is very much in the scientific arena. Evolutionary game theory, among other tools, has been used to demonstrate that it's highly probably that human beings do not perceive objective reality as it truly is. See “The Case Against Reality” by Donald Hoffman. Edit: more precise language.
- dbspin 4y ago
  This has already been replied to but no, this is not a 'God of the gaps' argument. As I mentioned it's a thread in ongoing research on cognition. There's a good summary of some of the perspectives in this space here - https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-20160421 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolutionary-argument-aga...

cameronh90 4y ago

I've long thought there is some sort of intelligence parallel to Turing Completeness: given enough time, resources and experimentation, it can figure anything out. At least at a super-organism level, humanity has achieved that, in my opinion. However, I'm not sure whether any individual human can be said to meet that criteria. Perhaps some exceptional examples meet that criteria, or maybe there is some vague IQ cut-off where any human could meet that criteria if given a really long time to study a problem - but I'm fairly certain that many humans don't meet that criteria individually. Obviously this isn't a mathematical or scientifically provable statement, just a general concept that gets a bit fuzzy at the edges. What I would add is a lot of people seem to judge AI overly harshly compared to humans, perhaps comparing them against humanity as a super-organism or at least an above average human. Sure, ChatGPT makes weird mistakes and can't write code as well as me, but compared to many people I know, it's a far better programmer and possibly less error prone in general. Too many people are like "ha it can't solve this differential equation", but my mum doesn't even know what a differential equation is, and thought that the moon was the sun at night. At least ChatGPT knows the moon is a distinct celestial body to the sun.