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I have been working in human and artificial intelligence for several years now. It is not at all apparent to me that intelligence has a clear meaning. I think

I have been working in human and artificial intelligence for several years now. It is not at all apparent to me that intelligence has a clear meaning. I think the definitional problem is significant, but the problem is even more fundamental than that. A couple of years ago, I witnessed a heated disagreement at a conference about whether intelligence required learning or not. Does intelligence require embodiment? Perception? Sensation? Agency? Intentionality? Cognition? Metacognition? Other higher cognitive/executive functions? These concepts are not just to embellish the definition a bit. They are fundamental to what intelligence is. A plausible definition you could find in a journal article might be: An embodied agent that can intentionally solve problems using information obtained from the external environment plus introspection, by way of various executive functions, and then affect the external environment accordingly. Some philosophers and researchers would agree, and some would disagree, because of what they each think intelligence is. > but I think artificial intelligence is a very useful terminology and concept, not a marketing term. I agree that the term is fine. But it is absolutely also used as a nonsense marketing term. ChatGPT or one of the other OpenAI models was calling itself an "advanced AI system" or some such bullshit. The term itself is not to blame, but people definitely (mis)use it that way.

golol 3y ago
Why does there have to be one specific combination of these aspects that yields the one, true "intelligence"? The truth is that it is simply an extremely extremely broad spectrum. Any agent that performs useful computations can be argued to be intelligent in some way. It does not make sense to argue endlessly in an attempt to lift this lower bound. Let's just acknowledge that slime molds, bacteria and NPCs have some form of intelligence so we can move on and define more specific and useful types of intelligences: Embodied intelligence, social intelligence, learning intelligence, general intelligence etc. Of course these will always be vague spectra, as nailing anything clearly down is extremely technical. Organizing things in sets is nice and all, but it is usually ill-defined on the boundaries and when it leads to endless discussions it's better to just think in terms of functionals. Some abstract functional tells you how intelligent, how embodied or how learning a certain agent is, according to some scale.

golol 3y ago

Why does there have to be one specific combination of these aspects that yields the one, true "intelligence"? The truth is that it is simply an extremely extremely broad spectrum. Any agent that performs useful computations can be argued to be intelligent in some way. It does not make sense to argue endlessly in an attempt to lift this lower bound. Let's just acknowledge that slime molds, bacteria and NPCs have some form of intelligence so we can move on and define more specific and useful types of intelligences: Embodied intelligence, social intelligence, learning intelligence, general intelligence etc. Of course these will always be vague spectra, as nailing anything clearly down is extremely technical. Organizing things in sets is nice and all, but it is usually ill-defined on the boundaries and when it leads to endless discussions it's better to just think in terms of functionals. Some abstract functional tells you how intelligent, how embodied or how learning a certain agent is, according to some scale.