I feel like, if nothing else, this new wave of AI products is rapidly demonstrating the lack of faith people have in their own intelligence -- or maybe, just the intelligence of other human beings. That's not to say that this latest round of AI isn't impressive, but legions of apologists seem to forget that there is more to human cognition than being able to regurgitate facts, write grammatically-correct sentences, and solve logical puzzles.
> legions of apologists seem to forget that there is more to human cognition than being able to regurgitate facts, write grammatically-correct sentences, and solve logical puzzles
To be fair, there is a section of the population whose useful intelligence can roughly be summed up as that or worse.
I think this takes an unnecessarily narrow view of what "intelligence" implies. It conflates "intelligence" with fact-retention and communicative ability. There are many other intelligent capabilities that most normally-abled human beings possess, such as:
- Processing visual data and classifying objects within their field of vision.
- Processing auditory data, identifying audio sources and filtering out noise.
- Maintaining an on-going and continuous stream of thoughts and emotions.
- Forming and maintaining complex memories on long-term and short-term scales.
- Engaging in self-directed experimentation or play, or forming independent wants/hopes/desires.
I could sit here all day and list the forms of intelligence that humans and other intelligent animals display which have no obvious analogue in an AI product. It's true that individual AI products can do some of these things, sometimes better than humans could ever, but there is no integrated AGI product that has all these capabilities. Let's give ourselves a bit of credit and not ignore or flippantly dismiss our many intelligent capabilities as "useless."
> It conflates "intelligence" with fact-retention and communicative ability
No, I’m using useful problem solving as my benchmark. There are useless forms of intelligence. And that’s fine. But some people have no useful intelligence and show no evidence of the useless kind. They don’t hit any of the bullets you list, there just isn’t that curiosity and drive and—I suspect—capacity to comprehend.
I don’t think it’s intrinsic. I’ve seen pets show more curiosity than some folk. But due to nature and nurture, they just aren’t intelligent to any material stretch.
Literally everything that's been invented.