4 ms·
Just wondering... What is Intellgience?
by kreelman 6mo ago
Just wondering... What is Intellgience?
- mettamage 6mo agoThe titel has a typo as the actual article has the title "The Social Edge of Intelligence".
- ForHackernews 6mo agoI've corrected the typo now, but I almost let it stand as a testament to my humanity.
- mettamage 6mo agoYea no worries, just wanted others to know since when I typed the comment, the submission was quite fresh. It was my hope that it would make less people confused. I didn't mind that there was a typo.
- ForHackernews 6mo agoI assume most readers could decipher that typo, but I recognize your need to be pedantically correct as part of the grand tradition of HN.
- SecretDreams 6mo agoIf you gotta ask, you can't afford it. ~ intelligence
- caditinpiscinam 6mo agoWe have various methods of measuring individual intelligence (which are pretty sketchy imo). But do we have any way to measure or quantify the intelligence of the larger structures that mediate our thought? How do you measure the intelligence of a university, or a business? How much intelligence is contained within a collection of books and papers? To what degree do the tools we use amplify our intelligence? I see students obsess every day over their SAT scores, which to some is a measure of individual intelligence. But what SAT score would a pair of students working together on a single test get? Or a dozen students working together? Would it be higher or lower? What sort of strategies would maximize their ability to collaborate? What would be the effect of giving/removing access to a calculator on a student's score? Access to scratch paper? Access to textbooks? Access to a dictionary? Access to unlimited time? If we want to claim to understand intelligence, these are the sort of questions we should be able to answer. Can we?
- richardw 6mo agoNot sure if you remember this chess game. 1 man vs 50000. Quite an amazing outcome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World
- qsera 6mo agoI don't have a good answer. But I have a good reason to say LLMs are not intelligent. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918103
- alberto467 6mo agoIf you can’t define it you cannot say where it is present or not.
- sublinear 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics)
- qsera 6mo agoThat is not true. We can detect the presence of a thing by the observation of something it causes. That does not imply we have a good definition of the thing. At that point, we can only define it as something that causes this observation. And that is not very useful.
- horsawlarway 6mo agoWe might both agree its a poor definition, but at least it's a poor definition that's observable and neutral. That's useful in regards to this conversation. Where as the other answer is simply "I can't say, but it's not [this]" and that isn't useful at all. It's simply opinion, which is literally the worst definition around. Personally, I don't define intelligence as "whatever qsera acknowledges as intelligence with no qualifying context"...
- qsera 6mo agoI think it is useless as a definition, so not even a poor one. But here you go, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918103
- cjs_ac 6mo agoIn psychology, there is no definition of intelligence, but it is generally understood as whatever it is that intelligence tests measure.
- GodelNumbering 6mo agoNo consensus but a decent definition is: Ability to utilize resources to achieve outcomes
- amelius 6mo agoLike kicking a ball to win a soccer match?
- GodelNumbering 6mo agoYes, kicking a ball in the right way does require intelligence.
- atwrk 6mo agoThat sounds more like competency, not intelligence, which funnily enough is only loosely correlated to intelligence.
- armchairhacker 6mo agoOne measure is the ability to find an optimal solution among many options. From solving an integration problem (option = equation, optimal = correct) to life (option = life choice, optimal = best QOL). Statistically, an LLM finds a better optimal solution than one individual. But LLM solutions are more similar to each other than individuals’, so among many individuals, a few find a better optimal solution than the LLMs. Hence why I think we need AI that responds more uniquely. Whether that be fine-tuned local models, one LLM that’s more influenced by its prompt and well-supports extremely long prompts, AI tools for humans, or something else. I’d love to see a local AI with continuous learning that generates complex UX to better interact with the user (more than prompts), but that may be far-fetched…
- MyHonestOpinon 6mo agoThe definition I give to my children: It is the ability to make good decisions.
- loudmax 6mo agoThat is a very reasonable definition, but having grown up playing Dungeons & Dragons, making good decisions strikes me as Wisdom, not Intelligence. Very "intelligent" people can use those smarts to justify or rationalize all kinds of crazy stupid decisions.
- xenocratus 6mo agoAn ambiguous metric that's been (ab)used quite a lot by human fundamentalists to try to draw a line between what we can do and what machines can do, in order to feel better about themselves. Or were you looking for a different definition?
- 21asdffdsa12 6mo agoSubstance that can hold State that can allow the substance to produce more of the same state in a dangerous universe full of entropy that wants to remove state-full entities by default - and which is prowled by other state-full entities which predate one another, in such a way that game theory and evolutionary pressure applies.
- gzread 6mo agoSuccessful selfishness. The ability to make executable plans to tilt the future in your favor.