[patrickhogan1]

Do you think intelligence exists without prior experience? For instance, can someone instantly acquire a skill—like playing the piano—as if downloading it in The Matrix? Even prodigies like Mozart had prior exposure. His father, a composer and music teacher, introduced him to music from an early age. Does true intelligence require a foundation of prior knowledge?

[1659447091]

Intelligence requires the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff on one's own to create a foundation of knowledge to build on.

It is also entirely possible to learn a skill without prior experience. That's how it(whatever skill) was first done

[owenpalmer]

> Does true intelligence require a foundation of prior knowledge?

This is the way I think about it.

I = E / K

where I is the intelligence of the system, E is the effectiveness of the system, and K is the prior knowledge.

For example, a math problem is given to two students, each solving the problem with the same effectiveness (both get the correct answer in the same amount of time). However, student A happens to have more prior knowledge of math than student B. In this case, the intelligence of B is greater than the intelligence of A, even though they have the same effectiveness. B was able to "figure out" the math, without using any of the "tricks" that A already knew.

Now back to your question of whether or not prior knowledge is required. As K approaches 0, intelligence approaches infinity. But when K=0, intelligence is undefined. Tada! I think that answers your question.

Most LLM benchmarks simply measure effectiveness, not intelligence. I conceptualize LLMs as a person with a photographic memory and a low IQ of 85, who was given 100 billion years to learn everything humans have ever created.

IK = E

low intelligence * vast knowledge = reasonable effectiveness

[patrickhogan1]

Thank you for detailing out your thoughts. This is quite a well detailed out argument.

In your calculations, in relation to humans, how do you view the 500k - 700k years of learned behaviors and acquired responses passed to offspring?

[otabdeveloper4]

Reducing the broad category of "experience" to "computable functions in the mathematical sense" is quite, hm, reductive.