[mjburgess]

General intelligence is an ability to cope, adapt and thrive in an ecology: to start from a limited set of capabilities, and via exploration, acquire a rich competence. To develop conceptualisations, techniques of coordination and control, to form novel goals and strategies to realise them, and so on.

General intelligence is a strategy to defer the acquisition of abilities from the process of construction/blueprinting (ie., genes, evolution..) to the living environment of the animal. The most generally intelligent animals are those that have nearly all of their sensory motor skills acquired during their life -- we learn to walk and so can learn to play the piano, and to build a rocket.

There is a serious discontinuity in strategy to achive this defferal: the kinds of processes which "blueprint" the intelligence of a bacterium are discontinuous with the processes which a living animal needs to dynamically conceptualise its environment under shifts to its structure.

Of the latter animals need: living adaption of their sensory-motor systems, heirachical coordination of their bodies, robust causal modelling, and so on.

General intelligence is primitively a kind of movement, which becomes abstract only with a few hundred thousand years of culture. The earliest humans, able to lingusitically express almost nothing, were nevertheless generally intelligent.

Present computer-science-led investigations into "intelligence" assume you can operate syntactically across the most peripheral consequences of general intelligence given by linguistic representations. This is profoundly misguided: each todller necessarily must learn to walk. You cannot just project a slideshow of walking, and get anywhere. And if you remove this capability and install a "walking module", you've remved the very capabilities which allow that child then to do anything new at all.

There is nothing in the linguistic syntactical shadow of human intelligence to be found in creating generally capable systems. It's just overfitting to our 2024 reflections.

[bondarchuk]

Maybe that would be a suitable working definition of general intelligence, and props to you for even giving a definition at all (in contrast to TFA). However your definition seems almost tailor-made to exclude present and near-future AI (and, I suspect, motivated thereby) . Current AI works by being trained on large amounts of existing data. If current AI would be real intelligence, we would be sad, therefore real intelligence is the opposite of intelligence trained on large amounts of data.

Having said that, one can also make the case that LLMs start from a limited set of capabilities and, via exploration, acquire a rich competence. Only these are linguistic abilities and the exploration is exploration of a linguistic environment. Maybe the real intelligence is the friends we made along the way i.e. the general class of algorithms roughly called "backpropagation and gradient descent on a very high-dimensional neural network".

[HarHarVeryFunny]

The most meaningful definition of intelligence is one that captures the essence/nature of human/animal intelligence, which is where the word originated.

I think you can get to the core of it by considering the evolutionary benefit of intelligence - what beneficial behavioral capability has been optimized - which comes down to being able to utilize past experience to predict/plan future outcomes, rather than being locked into reactive behavior patterns like simpler animals.

LLMs, trained to predict based on past "experience", might (perhaps charitably) be considered to exhibit some intelligence, but where they notably fail is in situations where better prediction (utilization of prior experience) requires a process more similar to search with backtracking than a linear application of rules derived from the training data - i.e. in the areas of reasoning and planning.

You can try to put lipstick on the pig by adding RL-based post-training or wrapping the LLM in an agentic loop, trying to extract more value out of the training data and gain some semblance of reasoning, but at the end of the day it's still a pig - at heart just an expert system not a cognitive architecture.

Another obvious limitation of LLMs is that they are just a repository of canned knowledge/rules, with no ability to learn from "runtime" experience, and therefore lacking the ability to learn to handle novel problems by experimentation and adaptation to failure.

The limited intelligence of LLMs is firmly baked into their architecture - the transformer, being just as pass-thru model, as well as the way they are trained by SGD rather than an algorithm capable of continuous incremental learning.

[mjburgess]

It's tailor made to describe the phenomenon of animal intelligence that we're trying to model.

The only tailoring which goes on is by those who say, "we can only do X, therefore Y must be defined in terms of X". It's deeply pseudoscientific approach to investigation, as it completely abandons a scientific theory of empirical phenomenon over a purely circumstantial account given in terms of what tools we have to hand.

I can think of no other area where such an approach to investigation is permitted.

[empath75]

> General intelligence is an ability to cope, adapt and thrive in an ecology: to start from a limited set of capabilities, and via exploration, acquire a rich competence. To develop conceptualisations, techniques of coordination and control, to form novel goals and strategies to realise them, and so on.

One thing I've learned over the past few years is that _nobody_ knows what intelligence is, and it may not even exist as a genuinely measurable attribute. What you've described is certainly _a thing_ that is worth describing and thinking about, but it doesn't encompass everything that we think of as intelligence, and ascribes intelligence to processes which most of us don't think of as intelligent (ie, evolution and plant life).

The problem we have is that for the entire history of humanity, there has been a single example of something that "thinks like us" and our conception of what it means to be "intelligent" or to have "reason" or to "think" is just inextricably tied with all the other attributes that make us human.

I'm not at all sure that intelligence _must_ arise out of a process of evolution and natural selection, and i think that it may be possible to create an intelligent entity which completely lacks the ability to survive in an ecology on its own.

On the other hand, it's often said that while humans domesticated plants and animals, those same plants and animals also domesticated _us_. Human life rearranged itself around the requirements of farming and animal husbandry, and just in terms of pure biomass and range of habitat, becoming "domesticated" was a tremendously successful evolutionary strategy for the animals that we domesticated.

Human society is now _again_ re-arranging itself in order to take advantage of AI, and we're spending a lot of money and labor building these systems and maintaining them. It's hard to say that they haven't adapted themselves to surviving in an ecology, it's just a more abstract ecology than the sort of blood and claw ecology that we evolved in.

In some sense, these AIs are the ultimate expression of "memetic evolution" -- ideas that are able to spawn new ideas, without having any meaningful embodiment at all.

[starchild3001]

Thank you for being sensible We have so many "intelligence professors", who can conveniently dismiss SoTA AIs with a sleight of hand (Cholet, LeCunn etc), yet completely ignore the superintelligent traits these AIs already exhibit.

FYI: SoTA AIs can think and reason. They're far far away from mere memorization & retrieval. They aren't human yet, nor do we expect them to be. They'll just keep getting ever better in their own ways, and become super duper useful for practically everything as computer buddies first, agents next, robots next next.

The "intelligence professors" I'm hoping will at some point shut up and accept that "functional/universal approximation" is all you need, which is abundantly done by neural nets of today.

[MrMcCall]

Human nature is to have a moral compass (conscience), with a mind to contemplate whether our planned behavior is positive or negative for the happiness of those around us, and a free will to then choose which paths to take.

What you describe is all present in the animals, to more or less advanced degree, where chimps and crows can use tools and even pass that knowledge on to others. Yes, our bodies follow the mammalian template, and with it comes our baseline tendencies to form packs to fight against other packs and fight for dominance within the pack, all in order to enjoy more physical pleasure. We inherit that, but we are capable of rising above those animalistic urges to become a humanitarian, who considers the happiness of others, and even the whole, in their decisions.

Further, with our advanced being and our free will, we are able to self-evolve our ideals, attitudes, and behaviors, in EITHER moral direction: either towards a more selfish, brutal, and callous competitive state, or towards a more selfless, compasionate, and caring cooperative state. The former leads to where we are now in human history, the latter, rarely exercised, leads to our highest potential, returning us to a happy, prosperous, environmental-concerned human race with various cultural differences but united in the success of each and every person, should they choose to participate.

So, no, no computer logic engine at present can in any way mimic the totality of "human intelligence" because very few people understand human nature, so they can only literally "ape" it. They can't even approach simulating what is going on within us, the only moral beings on this planet, and the only beings here with the power to consciously change ourselves and our environment, for better or worse, it all being our choice, however subconscious and inertial for the vast majority.

[FrustratedMonky]

"moral compass"

Right from the start, so many assumptions.

It is going a little under the radar, but AI is really throwing the religions into a tizzy now that they are being forced to think about these things. In the good old days, you could just trust the bible to say how we were created.

Now people are being forced to think about it for the first time. Where do morals come from? Do they even exist? Who am I? What am I doing here?

Like whole new generation having an existential crisis.

[MrMcCall]

If you dare, you can read my recent comment history for the explanation, but I doubt you're going to like it. And it is the explanation. Someone had to do it!

[otikik]

I would say that consciousness is a necessary requirement in order to have moral compass. But I would not equate the two.

[MrMcCall]

True, but our consciousness comes with an integral moral compass that we are completely free to utterly ignore or even act in opposition to. It's our gift and our responsibility, and our absolute choice, for good or ill.

[raddan]

Is it actually integral? I’m not sure. Try asking a person whether some arbitrary scenario is right or wrong and why. A good null hypothesis is that, for people with no training in morality or ethics, responses will be uniformly distributed over outcomes.

[MrMcCall]

Yes, but we can choose to ignore it. Ignorance of our human nature potentials is our choice, too, and that's the reason for the inertia of the world's societies, including ones that claim to be religious.

The key is that, just as our physical bodies have developmental stages of ever-increasing capability, so does our moral compass. We must learn how to not only use it, but to develop it and fine-tune over time, and we must train and use our mind to self-evolve ourselves.

Note that we can use our free will to de-tune it as well so that we have pointed ourselves in the direction opposite to our happiness, and that of those we come in contact with. In other words, we are free to use our abilities to create unhappiness, out of sadistic pleasure.

The first step of the spiritual path is awakening to this highest of human potential, where we learn to willfully and with difficult effort develop our moral compass in the direction of compassionate concern for the well-being of our fellow human beings. This is why the selfish -- to themselves and their in-group -- people of the world are loath to hear the term "woke"; they take pleasure in remaining ignorant of both the unhappiness they cause and thus karmically receive by their selfish actions. And the same impulse within us that seeks to keep us ignorant of our highest human potential, is also keen to keep its ideals, attitudes, and behaviors off other people's radar. The development of a selflessly compassionate morality become like garlic to a vampire (and they do suck, and suck the life-blood out of the world's systems and people, for sure, causing so much misery by their efforts).

So, yes, our moral compasses are each in various states of development, from the utterly ignored to sometimes-positive-sometimes-negative to the fully developed. As usual, such distributions follow a bell curveish shape. But only the long tail in the positive direction understands and manifests the highest morality. The middle bulk are hit or miss, per their cultures' predilections and the circumstances of their life. And the negative tail are the uttlerly selfish evil bastards of the world.

You can find a full explication of our human nature to self-evolve and the process of manifesting such change in the deep dialog I had yesterday under my comment to Maria Konnikova's poetry article submission. You have to skip past my initial reply and its grand-reply to get to the meat of it.

[mjburgess]

I see no difference today between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War and the recent news from the middle east, ukraine, and even, korea.

We fight to establish hierarchies of dominance called, "monopolies of violence", that we have social allegiance to. If a competing "dominance regime" is in our neighbourhood, we draw territorial boundaries -- and if these fail, riot, and if that fails, kill.

The strategy of intragroup 'mutual aid' is common across the animal kingdom -- and is paired with hostility to 'foreign aid' in its literal sense.

The achievement of the modern world is massive amounts of abundance which increases our generosity beyond typical chimpanzee proportions -- but not by much. And upon a single attack, or moment of scarcity, we return back exactly to our genocidal defaults -- which is to say, group-centred violence.

Abundance and 'wars only on our borders' creates a dangerous illusion of equanimity which is moreso just, "the feeling of an ape fat, tired and safe".

[MrMcCall]

Yes, my recent comment history contains the explanation for why we have the potential for all of that but also to be true humanitarians. The short of it is that we can choose to learn how to be better by actually changing ourself, and then being a positive force in the world.

It is the Way, but we must choose it, after first seeking to escape our natural ignorance to the possibility.

[FrustratedMonky]

You're getting lost in the 'free-will' aspect and thinking you could 'choose' to be good.

“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer

[MrMcCall]

That sentence literally makes no sense, obviously coming from the spoiled mind of a coddled rich kid.

The fact is that you chose to write what you wrote, for good or ill. I spent all day yesterday explaining the truth of our moral existence to y'all here, conversing with a very fine fellow who has a bit of knowledge. It brought me a joy that no one else on this site has ever felt. It was electric, sans drugs of any kind, and only a couple of sips of coffee all day, which is very rare for me.

No, there's a force within you that will work its damnedest to get you to quit reading it before you get to the bottom. It starts in that post about Maria Konnakova's poetry article, but that's not the important part, or even my grand-reply (reply to my initial reply). Most people don't have the intellectual curiosity and bravery to read such utterly new information, but if you can read drivel from AS, you can make through one (rather long) page of mine.

I triple-dog dare ya ;-)

And remember, ignorance of the truth is a human vice that we must fight and defeat, in order to choose the better path, the Path of Love. Giving in to ignorance is a choice between good and evil, my friend. I hope you choose well, but you'll likely choose to rebel against the truth, and instead keep believing the lies that have been told to you, which is our body's monkey-inheritance.

Happy choosing! I truly wish you all success and happiness in this world, but that latter one is dependent upon our learning and manifesting the truth, my friend.

[raddan]

Is choice a fact? The point of the quote is that we do not know. It SEEMS like we have free will but this could be an illusion. Where do our desires and motivations come from? I have always had a strong desire to build things, either physical objects or mental ones (like code). These desires push me to make choices in my life, like pursuing the career I have. But did I choose my motivations? I’m not sure. I don’t remember choosing them. They are just feelings I have, and in some cases, can’t remember not having.

I am a scientist. Truth has a specific meaning to me. I’m not sure we share the same definition. That does not make either of us “evil.”