6 ms·

I don't want be too human-centric, but to be completely honest we haven't seen the slightest proof that human intelligence is not something special. I know lots

I don't want be too human-centric, but to be completely honest we haven't seen the slightest proof that human intelligence is not something special. I know lots of animals are pretty clever, none approach us in any practical sense. While it looks like an evolutionairy fluke that can be approached or even exceeded by other species - either on this or another planet - in the blink of an eye, I think that's actually more speculative than we would care to admit. We don't know. Maybe human intelligence is a very close approximation of cognition's equivalent of physic's light speed. Increasing it may turn out to be prohibitively expensive. There's lots of precedence for animals having acquired features close at or actually at the physical maximum of whatever it is they are optimizing for. To be clear, I'm not convinced of anything either way but I'd think it would as fantastic as it would be slightly depressing to find out human intelligence actually is some kind of global maximum with some exceptions like machines using energy harvested from black hole systems or something.

eimrine 3y ago
> we haven't seen the slightest proof that human intelligence is not something special. Have we seen the slightest proof of opposite? > I know lots of animals are pretty clever, none approach us in any practical sense. What senses might you consider as enough practical? Have you heard about Koko? What do you think about corvidae?
- macintux 3y ago
  I’m not weighing in on the debate, but there does seem to be a great deal of doubt that Koko was using language in an intelligent way.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    Even when she reported about her toothache? If this situation was not fabricated (why to fabricate a work of your life and how to do it unnoticed) the situation meets the definition of intelligence. What are your doubts, are they related on some data?
    - macintux 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)#Criticism “Great deal” may be overstated.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  > Have we seen the slightest proof of opposite? Well, for one, I see no competition. I don't know what the technical definition of "special" is, but I'd say being the only one counts for something. > What senses might you consider as enough practical? Have you heard about Koko? What do you think about corvidae? I know both and I know this is a slippery slope. You should know my love for animals runs deep, but I really struggly to put them in the same league as us. I took a shortcut with saying "practical", because this discussion is way too deep to be performed A) by me and B) on HN. Practical means something like, can they adapt their skills as widely as we can? Can they adapt to uncommon situations? Not subtly or in theory, like solving some puzzle, but really practical? There is nothing subtle about a human becoming a parkour world champignon (I'm leaving this in, just too good) or adapting to life in a submarine (or learning chess, or whittling, or making tea, and many literal millions more examples). Maybe I am overlooking something, but the skills these animals show seem really minor compared to what even disadvantaged humans are capable of.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    I appreciate the amount of intelligence you put in the message, it is interesting to read and to think about. But the style of your reasoning gives me some hints of creationism, let me show you some anti-creationism point of view. > Practical means something like, can they adapt their skills as widely as we can? The most crucial (in my opinion, which has been not introduced to any more crucial points) difference between us and Koko is that we can hold our breath and gorillas can not. That leaded us to develop speech in the seance that speechless group of apes can not win an exactly same group of apes with more developed communicative ability. This, and probably nothing more, has led to such a large gap between humans and apes, so large that humans have ceased to see the relationship between themselves and apes. I see your understanding of "practical" as something specialized, like agricultural revolution. But why a gorilla should start planting foods if it knows that nobody is going to protect its crops while sleeping because of just lack of common language? > Can they adapt to uncommon situations? What can be more uncommon than living on a trees without a warm house and typically without any house at all, without regular nutrition, with a lot of really different enemies from tiny insects to giant cats, with a regular fights, with no democracy and law and medicine? Being disadvantaged requires to face some uncommonities every day, what about office managers? Disadvantaged people (if they are just poor men and not disabled ones on welfare) can easily survive nuclear war because most of them are OK about living in a similar to gorillas livestyle, but I can not believe that most of average Joes survive a situation when their money are going to cost nothing because of lack of civilization.
ilaksh 3y ago
There is a limit to compression of human-relevant information which is largely what intelligence is. The main thing I am talking about is speed of output. You can already see huge increases in say old GPT-3.5 versus GPT-3.5-turbo or old GPT-4 to new. We know for a fact that the hardware inference speed can be increased by using faster (currently prohibitively expensive) memory or by packing more onto a chip. There are design for new memory-based computing paradigms. It's already clear that AI is superintelligent in certain domains or aspects. Such as the ability to exchange information with other agents. Computer hardware efficiency has relentlessly increased. It would be a total break with history if it suddenly stopped.
- vajrabum 3y ago
  What do you mean by exchange information with other agents? Can you give a concrete example or two?

eimrine 3y ago

> we haven't seen the slightest proof that human intelligence is not something special. Have we seen the slightest proof of opposite? > I know lots of animals are pretty clever, none approach us in any practical sense. What senses might you consider as enough practical? Have you heard about Koko? What do you think about corvidae?

macintux 3y ago
I’m not weighing in on the debate, but there does seem to be a great deal of doubt that Koko was using language in an intelligent way.
- eimrine 3y ago
  Even when she reported about her toothache? If this situation was not fabricated (why to fabricate a work of your life and how to do it unnoticed) the situation meets the definition of intelligence. What are your doubts, are they related on some data?
  - macintux 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)#Criticism “Great deal” may be overstated.
SanderNL 3y ago
> Have we seen the slightest proof of opposite? Well, for one, I see no competition. I don't know what the technical definition of "special" is, but I'd say being the only one counts for something. > What senses might you consider as enough practical? Have you heard about Koko? What do you think about corvidae? I know both and I know this is a slippery slope. You should know my love for animals runs deep, but I really struggly to put them in the same league as us. I took a shortcut with saying "practical", because this discussion is way too deep to be performed A) by me and B) on HN. Practical means something like, can they adapt their skills as widely as we can? Can they adapt to uncommon situations? Not subtly or in theory, like solving some puzzle, but really practical? There is nothing subtle about a human becoming a parkour world champignon (I'm leaving this in, just too good) or adapting to life in a submarine (or learning chess, or whittling, or making tea, and many literal millions more examples). Maybe I am overlooking something, but the skills these animals show seem really minor compared to what even disadvantaged humans are capable of.
- eimrine 3y ago
  I appreciate the amount of intelligence you put in the message, it is interesting to read and to think about. But the style of your reasoning gives me some hints of creationism, let me show you some anti-creationism point of view. > Practical means something like, can they adapt their skills as widely as we can? The most crucial (in my opinion, which has been not introduced to any more crucial points) difference between us and Koko is that we can hold our breath and gorillas can not. That leaded us to develop speech in the seance that speechless group of apes can not win an exactly same group of apes with more developed communicative ability. This, and probably nothing more, has led to such a large gap between humans and apes, so large that humans have ceased to see the relationship between themselves and apes. I see your understanding of "practical" as something specialized, like agricultural revolution. But why a gorilla should start planting foods if it knows that nobody is going to protect its crops while sleeping because of just lack of common language? > Can they adapt to uncommon situations? What can be more uncommon than living on a trees without a warm house and typically without any house at all, without regular nutrition, with a lot of really different enemies from tiny insects to giant cats, with a regular fights, with no democracy and law and medicine? Being disadvantaged requires to face some uncommonities every day, what about office managers? Disadvantaged people (if they are just poor men and not disabled ones on welfare) can easily survive nuclear war because most of them are OK about living in a similar to gorillas livestyle, but I can not believe that most of average Joes survive a situation when their money are going to cost nothing because of lack of civilization.

ilaksh 3y ago

There is a limit to compression of human-relevant information which is largely what intelligence is. The main thing I am talking about is speed of output. You can already see huge increases in say old GPT-3.5 versus GPT-3.5-turbo or old GPT-4 to new. We know for a fact that the hardware inference speed can be increased by using faster (currently prohibitively expensive) memory or by packing more onto a chip. There are design for new memory-based computing paradigms. It's already clear that AI is superintelligent in certain domains or aspects. Such as the ability to exchange information with other agents. Computer hardware efficiency has relentlessly increased. It would be a total break with history if it suddenly stopped.

vajrabum 3y ago
What do you mean by exchange information with other agents? Can you give a concrete example or two?