4 ms·

How is "superintelligence" defined?

lo_zamoyski 1y ago
The first rule of marketing and hype is to never define your terms. Instead, you insinuate and play into fantasy and wishful thinking.
wslh 1y ago
Same question. I don't think there's a universal definition of superintelligence. Just to add some food for thought: Is superintelligence simply a very high IQ, a higher than top humans one? If so, we'd need a way to measure that, since existing IQ tests are designed for human intelligence. Or is superintelligence about scale/order-of-magnitude: many high-IQ minds working together? That would imply a different kind of threshold. But perhaps the key idea is that superintelligence is inherently uncapped, that is once we reach a level we consider "superintelligent" we can still imagine something even more advanced that fits the same label.
criddell 1y ago
I define it as smarter than humans. The same way a dog will never understand L'Hôpital's rule, there are probably things that human beings will never understand but future AIs will. I'd call those AIs superintelligent.
- alazoral 1y ago
  I think it’s too easy to get anthropocentric and 1D about intelligence. That dog understands things about the world, important things, that mere humans like Bernoulli could never even dream of.
  - criddell 1y ago
    It's anthropocentric because it's being built by humans. If a dog built a superintelligent AI, I would assume it would be canocentric.
- AIPedant 1y ago
  It is worth emphasizing that dogs wouldn't understand formal calculus even if they were smarter than humans! They are not physiologically capable of doing formal mathematics: - their eyesight is too poor to read - their paws are not designed for fine manipulations so they cannot write or type - their throats and mouths are not nearly as nimble as ours, so they cannot vocally communicate detailed information Even if there was an Newton-level dog, they wouldn't be able to access the ideas of an earlier Euclid-level dog. Human knowledge is not just about our big brains, we've developed many physical features that make transmission of information far easier than other species. OTOH dogs do have a good intuitive "common-sense" understanding of arithmetic, geometry, and physics. It is the unique gift of humans that we can formalize and then extend this intuition, but this ability (and intelligence as a whole) relies on nonverbal common sense.
  - YetAnotherNick 1y ago
    All of these is true for Stephen Hawking. Of course one can argue that he couldn't have done it if not for other humans making technology for him.
    - AIPedant 1y ago
      The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve. That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to me that chimpanzees are theoretically capable of doing basic calculus as a matter of pattern-matching. But you can't force them to study it! Basic calculus is too tedious and high-effort to learn for a mere banana, you need something truly valuable like "guaranteed admission to the flagship state university" for human children to do it. But we don't have an equivalent offer for chimps. (Likewise an Isaac Newton - level dog might still find calculus exceptionally boring compared to chasing squirrels.)
      - tim333 1y ago

The first rule of marketing and hype is to never define your terms. Instead, you insinuate and play into fantasy and wishful thinking.

wslh 1y ago

Same question. I don't think there's a universal definition of superintelligence. Just to add some food for thought: Is superintelligence simply a very high IQ, a higher than top humans one? If so, we'd need a way to measure that, since existing IQ tests are designed for human intelligence. Or is superintelligence about scale/order-of-magnitude: many high-IQ minds working together? That would imply a different kind of threshold. But perhaps the key idea is that superintelligence is inherently uncapped, that is once we reach a level we consider "superintelligent" we can still imagine something even more advanced that fits the same label.

criddell 1y ago

I define it as smarter than humans. The same way a dog will never understand L'Hôpital's rule, there are probably things that human beings will never understand but future AIs will. I'd call those AIs superintelligent.

alazoral 1y ago
I think it’s too easy to get anthropocentric and 1D about intelligence. That dog understands things about the world, important things, that mere humans like Bernoulli could never even dream of.
- criddell 1y ago
  It's anthropocentric because it's being built by humans. If a dog built a superintelligent AI, I would assume it would be canocentric.
AIPedant 1y ago
It is worth emphasizing that dogs wouldn't understand formal calculus even if they were smarter than humans! They are not physiologically capable of doing formal mathematics: - their eyesight is too poor to read - their paws are not designed for fine manipulations so they cannot write or type - their throats and mouths are not nearly as nimble as ours, so they cannot vocally communicate detailed information Even if there was an Newton-level dog, they wouldn't be able to access the ideas of an earlier Euclid-level dog. Human knowledge is not just about our big brains, we've developed many physical features that make transmission of information far easier than other species. OTOH dogs do have a good intuitive "common-sense" understanding of arithmetic, geometry, and physics. It is the unique gift of humans that we can formalize and then extend this intuition, but this ability (and intelligence as a whole) relies on nonverbal common sense.
- YetAnotherNick 1y ago
  All of these is true for Stephen Hawking. Of course one can argue that he couldn't have done it if not for other humans making technology for him.
  - AIPedant 1y ago
    The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve. That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to me that chimpanzees are theoretically capable of doing basic calculus as a matter of pattern-matching. But you can't force them to study it! Basic calculus is too tedious and high-effort to learn for a mere banana, you need something truly valuable like "guaranteed admission to the flagship state university" for human children to do it. But we don't have an equivalent offer for chimps. (Likewise an Isaac Newton - level dog might still find calculus exceptionally boring compared to chasing squirrels.)
    - tim333 1y ago