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Well you say, if we're arguing whether it's intelligent or not, it probably isn't. Ok i guess the argument then...So what are these obvious signs of Intelligen

Well you say, if we're arguing whether it's intelligent or not, it probably isn't. Ok i guess the argument then...So what are these obvious signs of Intelligence the machines in question are not displaying? From the few you gave as example, "can't use language" - Obviously not a problem "can't use tools" - Digital tools, Some physical tools is certainly possible today "can't tie own shoelaces" - Don't know any animal that can do this and animals pass your bar of intelligence. Sure we're having endless arguments about the Intelligence of Sota LLMs today but almost none of it has anything to do with observable, testable capabilities. In other words, the problem of these debates isn't that people are disagreeing seeing both the bird and plane have willful sustained airtime (aka flying). It's that they've seen both and decided for entirely arbitrary reasons to label one, "real flying" and the other, "fake flying". And if you then ask the reasonable question, "Which properties separate the so called 'real flight' from 'fake flight' and how do we test for it?", then nobody seems to have any clue.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
Above you're arguing for one side of the debate. I'm arguing that as long as there is a debate the safest bet is to adopt the default, null position: it's not flying; it's not intelligent. To summarise my argument again: if we can all agree that something is intelligent, then it probably is. If we can't, then it probably isn't, especially, I would add, if there is substantial disagreement. One motivation for this is to avoid an unending quest for the right definition. Once we can all agree what (artificial) intelligence is, it will be much easier to agree to a definition. But while we're all looking at the same thing and can't agree on what it is, how can we agree on a definition, and then use it to support one or the other side of the debate? Take human intelligence. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that humans are intelligent, except perhaps for the purpose of being contrary, or being a philosopher[1]. We may not know what "intelligent" means, but we can agree that whatever it is, it's something that humans have. Yes, that's an arbitrary decision, but as long as we can agree on it, it doesn't matter that it's arbitrary: it matters that there is consensus, based on common experience, and we all know what we're talking about. We can't get to a definition of a phenomenon before we all agree that it is there: we all agreed that fire is fire, water is water and ice is ice, a long time before we had any sort of commonly agreed definitions of them. "I can't put my finger on it but I know it when I see it"- that's a very simple way to avoid discussions that lead nowhere. And there are way too many discussion that lead nowhere in AI. Edit: btw, in research the discussions are much more focused. E.g. "LLMs can plan": that's a concrete, testable claim. No reason to define intelligence to resolve it. Much more progress is made this way than by endlessly chasing our tails about what is or isn't intelligent. ___________ [1] The purpose of science is to pose questions and answer them. The purpose of philosophy is to pose questions and question them.
- persnickety 2y ago
  How much of a consensus is there though, when as soon as you start digging at the edges, the consensus dissolves? And the edges are boundaries of the pool of the experiences we know. What about the experiences we don't know? What if we start considering not only agents with a physical body, but also add a dimension of agents without one (considering that the ways we recognize intelligence in animals is by the way they move)? Then our entire discussion jumps to the border, and the consensus is nowhere to be found, making the heuristic - again - biased towards the familiar. No, I think we need a better heuristic than consensus. The consequences of a bad heuristics are, at best, wasting time, but at worst, pulling the trigger on something heinous because it was insufficiently understood.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
    I don't think that hideous things, like eugenics or Nazi racism, happen because of a lack of understanding. They happen because people have their heads up their butts with megalomaniac ideas about the world and their place in it. The "Master Race" was not a misunderstanding, it was some people wanting to be better than everyone else and making up, out of whole cloth -and no empirical evidence at all- that they were. There certainly wasn't universal consensus about it btw, just between Nazis. I agree that there are dangers in trusting consensus as a mechanism for advancement of knowledge, and I see your point about risking losing focus on the border. But I think it is also very important to have a common body of knowledge that we can all agree on. Take flying again: nobody disputes the fact that planes are flying (again, nobody who isn't just being contrary). We can work out the gray areas in time and they don't necessarily make progress impossible. E.g. maybe we can't agree on whether hovercrafts fly, but we can still make them and use them. So there is a limiting effect, like I point out in my other comment, but it is not a hard lock on progress. And I think that avoiding endless philosophical discussions is a big advantage. If there is a better heuristic then I'm happy to embrace it btw. But, is there?
    - persnickety 2y ago
      Hideous things can be done by evil people, but also accidentally by well-meaning people when they don't realize what the stakes are. How many people stop being racist only because they leave the environment where racism was prevalent and they get exposed to a different heuristic on human worth? There's a paper discussing heuristics for determining the moral worth (not intelligence) of being which advocates the precautionary principle: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AIRights2-180604.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AIRights2... > avoid acting heinously by the standards of any reasonable ethical principle that draws a significant proportion of well-informed, thoughtful theorists

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago

Above you're arguing for one side of the debate. I'm arguing that as long as there is a debate the safest bet is to adopt the default, null position: it's not flying; it's not intelligent. To summarise my argument again: if we can all agree that something is intelligent, then it probably is. If we can't, then it probably isn't, especially, I would add, if there is substantial disagreement. One motivation for this is to avoid an unending quest for the right definition. Once we can all agree what (artificial) intelligence is, it will be much easier to agree to a definition. But while we're all looking at the same thing and can't agree on what it is, how can we agree on a definition, and then use it to support one or the other side of the debate? Take human intelligence. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that humans are intelligent, except perhaps for the purpose of being contrary, or being a philosopher[1]. We may not know what "intelligent" means, but we can agree that whatever it is, it's something that humans have. Yes, that's an arbitrary decision, but as long as we can agree on it, it doesn't matter that it's arbitrary: it matters that there is consensus, based on common experience, and we all know what we're talking about. We can't get to a definition of a phenomenon before we all agree that it is there: we all agreed that fire is fire, water is water and ice is ice, a long time before we had any sort of commonly agreed definitions of them. "I can't put my finger on it but I know it when I see it"- that's a very simple way to avoid discussions that lead nowhere. And there are way too many discussion that lead nowhere in AI. Edit: btw, in research the discussions are much more focused. E.g. "LLMs can plan": that's a concrete, testable claim. No reason to define intelligence to resolve it. Much more progress is made this way than by endlessly chasing our tails about what is or isn't intelligent. ___________ [1] The purpose of science is to pose questions and answer them. The purpose of philosophy is to pose questions and question them.

persnickety 2y ago
How much of a consensus is there though, when as soon as you start digging at the edges, the consensus dissolves? And the edges are boundaries of the pool of the experiences we know. What about the experiences we don't know? What if we start considering not only agents with a physical body, but also add a dimension of agents without one (considering that the ways we recognize intelligence in animals is by the way they move)? Then our entire discussion jumps to the border, and the consensus is nowhere to be found, making the heuristic - again - biased towards the familiar. No, I think we need a better heuristic than consensus. The consequences of a bad heuristics are, at best, wasting time, but at worst, pulling the trigger on something heinous because it was insufficiently understood.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  I don't think that hideous things, like eugenics or Nazi racism, happen because of a lack of understanding. They happen because people have their heads up their butts with megalomaniac ideas about the world and their place in it. The "Master Race" was not a misunderstanding, it was some people wanting to be better than everyone else and making up, out of whole cloth -and no empirical evidence at all- that they were. There certainly wasn't universal consensus about it btw, just between Nazis. I agree that there are dangers in trusting consensus as a mechanism for advancement of knowledge, and I see your point about risking losing focus on the border. But I think it is also very important to have a common body of knowledge that we can all agree on. Take flying again: nobody disputes the fact that planes are flying (again, nobody who isn't just being contrary). We can work out the gray areas in time and they don't necessarily make progress impossible. E.g. maybe we can't agree on whether hovercrafts fly, but we can still make them and use them. So there is a limiting effect, like I point out in my other comment, but it is not a hard lock on progress. And I think that avoiding endless philosophical discussions is a big advantage. If there is a better heuristic then I'm happy to embrace it btw. But, is there?
  - persnickety 2y ago
    Hideous things can be done by evil people, but also accidentally by well-meaning people when they don't realize what the stakes are. How many people stop being racist only because they leave the environment where racism was prevalent and they get exposed to a different heuristic on human worth? There's a paper discussing heuristics for determining the moral worth (not intelligence) of being which advocates the precautionary principle: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AIRights2-180604.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AIRights2... > avoid acting heinously by the standards of any reasonable ethical principle that draws a significant proportion of well-informed, thoughtful theorists