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For an intelligence to be "General" there would have to be no type of intelligence that it did not have access to (even if its capabilities in that domain were

For an intelligence to be "General" there would have to be no type of intelligence that it did not have access to (even if its capabilities in that domain were limited). The idea that that's what humans have strikes me as the same kind of thinking that led us to believe that earth was in the center of the universe. Surely there are ways of thinking that we have no concept of. General intelligence would be like an impulsive 12 year old boy who could see 6 spatial dimensions and regarded us as cartoons for only sticking to 3.

throwaway314155 2y ago
Humans can survive in space and on the moon because our intelligence is robust to environments we never encountered (or evolved to encounter). That's "all" general intelligence is meant to refer to. General just means robust to the unknown. I've seen some use "super" (as in superhuman) intelligence lately to describe what you're getting at.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Super feels to me like it's a difference in degree rather than in kind. Something with intelligences {A, b, c} might be super intelligent compared with {a, b, c}. i.e. more intelligent in domain A. But if one has {a, b, c} and the other has {b, c, d} neither is more or less intelligent than the other, they just have different capabilities. "Super" is a bit too one-dimensional for the job.
  - throwaway314155 2y ago
    I don't think using set notation is really helping your case here but (I think?) I agree.
tialaramex 2y ago
No. AGI is talking about the "general" human intelligence rather than specialism. An AGI would be as good as a human at both composing poetry and playing chess, both identifying bird calls and proving mathematical theorems. We don't know what a categorically superior intelligence would be so we can't rate some machine on that basis. The Lem story "Golem XIV" concerns a machine which claims it possesses categorically superior intelligence, and further that another machine humans have built (which runs but seems unwilling to communicate with them at all) is even more intelligent still. Golem tries to explain using analogies, but it's apparent that it finds communicating with humans frustrating, the way it might be frustrating to try to explain things to a golden retriever. Lem wrote elsewhere that the single commonality between Golem's intelligence and our own is curiosity, unlike Annie, Golem is curious about the humans which is why it's bothering to communicate with them. Humans (of course) plot to destroy both machines. Annie eliminates the conspirators, betraying a hitherto un-imagined capability to act at great distance, and the story remarks that it seems she does so the way a human would swat a buzzing insect. She doesn't fear the humans, but they're annoying so she destroyed them without a thought.

throwaway314155 2y ago

Humans can survive in space and on the moon because our intelligence is robust to environments we never encountered (or evolved to encounter). That's "all" general intelligence is meant to refer to. General just means robust to the unknown. I've seen some use "super" (as in superhuman) intelligence lately to describe what you're getting at.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Super feels to me like it's a difference in degree rather than in kind. Something with intelligences {A, b, c} might be super intelligent compared with {a, b, c}. i.e. more intelligent in domain A. But if one has {a, b, c} and the other has {b, c, d} neither is more or less intelligent than the other, they just have different capabilities. "Super" is a bit too one-dimensional for the job.
- throwaway314155 2y ago
  I don't think using set notation is really helping your case here but (I think?) I agree.

tialaramex 2y ago

No. AGI is talking about the "general" human intelligence rather than specialism. An AGI would be as good as a human at both composing poetry and playing chess, both identifying bird calls and proving mathematical theorems. We don't know what a categorically superior intelligence would be so we can't rate some machine on that basis. The Lem story "Golem XIV" concerns a machine which claims it possesses categorically superior intelligence, and further that another machine humans have built (which runs but seems unwilling to communicate with them at all) is even more intelligent still. Golem tries to explain using analogies, but it's apparent that it finds communicating with humans frustrating, the way it might be frustrating to try to explain things to a golden retriever. Lem wrote elsewhere that the single commonality between Golem's intelligence and our own is curiosity, unlike Annie, Golem is curious about the humans which is why it's bothering to communicate with them. Humans (of course) plot to destroy both machines. Annie eliminates the conspirators, betraying a hitherto un-imagined capability to act at great distance, and the story remarks that it seems she does so the way a human would swat a buzzing insect. She doesn't fear the humans, but they're annoying so she destroyed them without a thought.