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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 089
AIList Digest Friday, 4 Nov 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 89
Today's Topics:
Intelligence - Definition & Measurement & Necessity for Definition
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Date: Tue, 1 Nov 83 13:39:24 PST
From: Philip Kahn <v.kahn@UCLA-LOCUS>
Subject: Definition of Intelligence
When it comes down to it, isn't intelligence the ability to
recognize space-time relationships? The nice thing about this definition
is that it recognizes that ants, programs, and humans all possess
varying degrees of intelligence (that is, varying degrees in their
ability to recognize space-time relationships). This implies that
intelligence is only correlative, and only indirectly related to
physical environmental interaction.
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Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1983 22:22 EST
From: SLOAN%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Slow intelligence/chess
... Suppose you played chess at strength 2000 given 5 seconds
per move, 2010 given 5 minutes, and 2050 given as much time as
you desired...
An excellent point. Unfortunately wrong. This is a common error,
made primarily by 1500 players and promoters of chess toys. Chess
ratings measure PERFORMANCE at TOURNAMENT TIME CONTROLS (generally
ranging between 1.5 to 3 moves per minute). To speak of "strength
2000 at 5 seconds per move" or "2500 given as much time as desired" is
absolutely meaningless. That is why there are two domestic rating
systems, one for over-the-board play and another for postal chess.
Both involve time limits, the limits are very different, and the
ratings are not comparable. There is probably some correlation, but
the set of skills involved are incomparable.
This is entirely in keeping with the view that intelligence is
coupled with the environment, and involves a speed factor (you must
respond in "real-time" - whatever that happens to mean.) It also
speaks to the question of "loop-avoidance": in the real world, you
can't step in the same stream twice; you must muddle through, ready or
not.
To me, this suggests that all intelligent behavior consists of
generating crude, but feasible solutions to problems very quickly (so
as to be ready with a response) and then incrementally improving the
solution as time permits. In an ever changing environment, it is
better to respond inadequately than to ponder moot points.
-Ken Sloan
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Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1983 10:15:54 EST
From: AXLER.Upenn-1100@Rand-Relay (David M. Axler - MSCF Applications
Mgr.)
Subject: Turing Test Re-visited
I see that the Turing Test has (not unexpectedly) crept back into the
discussions of intelligence (1:85). I've wondered a bit as to whether the
TT shouldn't be extended a bit; to wit, the challenge it poses should not only
include the ability to "pass" the test, but also the ability to act as a judge
for the test. Examining the latter should give us all sorts of clues as to
what preconceived notions we're imposing when we try to develop a machine or
program that satisfies only Turing's original problem
Dave Axler
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Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1983 10:10 EST
From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Parallelism & Consciousness
What I meant is that defining intelligence seems as pointless as
defining "life" and then arguing whether viruses are alive instead of
asking how they work and solve the problems that appear to us to be
the interesting ones. Instead of defining so hard, one should look to
see what there is.
For example, about the loop-detecting thing, it is clear that in full
generality one can't detect all Turing machine loops. But we all know
intelligent people who appear to be caught, to some extent, in thought
patterns that appear rather looplike. That paper of mine on jokes
proposes that to be intelligent enough to keep out of simple loops,
the problem is solved by a variety of heuristic loop detectors, etc.
Of course, this will often deflect one from behaviors that aren't
loops and which might lead to something good if pursued. That's life.
I guess my complaint is that I think it is unproductive to be so
concerned with defining "intelligence" to the point that you even
discuss whether "it" is time-scale invariant, rather than, say, how
many computrons it takes to solve some class of problems. We want to
understand problem-solvers, all right. But I think that the word
"intelligence" is a social one that accumulates all sorts of things
that one person admires when observed in others and doesn't understand
how to do. No doubt, this can be narrowed down, with great effort,
e.g., by excluding physical; skills (probably wrongly, in a sense) and
so forth. But it seemed to me that the discussion here in AILIST was
going nowwhere toward understand intelligence, even in that sense.
In other words, it seems strange to me that there is no public
discussion of substantive issues in the field...
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Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1983 10:21 EST
From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Intelligence and Competition
The ability to cope with a CHANGE
in the environment marks intelligence.
See, this is what's usually called adaptiveness. This is why you
don't get anywhere defining intelligence -- until you have a clear idea
to define. Why be enslaved to the fact that people use a word, unless
you're sure it isn't a social accumulation.
------------------------------
Date: 2 Nov 1983 23:44-PST
From: ISAACSON@USC-ISI
Subject: Re: Parallelism & Consciousness
From Minsky:
...I think that the word "intelligence" is a social one
accumulates all sorts of things that one person
admires observed in others and doesn't understand how to
do...
In other words, it seems strange to me that there
is no public discussion of substantive issues in the
field...
Exactly... I agree on both counts. My purpose is to help
crystallize a few basic topics, worthy of serious discussion, that
relate to those elusive epiphenomena that we tend to lump under
that loose characterization: "Intelligence". I read both your LM
and Jokes papers and consider them seminal in that general
direction. I think, though, that your ideas there need, and
certainly deserve, further elucidation. In fact, I was hoping
that you would be willing to state some of your key points to
this audience.
More than this. Recently I've been attracted to Doug
Hofstadter's ideas on subcognition and think that attention
should be paid to them as well. As a matter of fact, I see
certain affinities between you two and would like to see a good
discussion that centers on LM, Jokes, and Subcognition as
Computation. I think that, in combination, some of the most
promising ideas for AI are awaiting full germination in those
papers.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1983 13:17 EST
From: BATALI%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Inscrutable Intelligence
From Minsky:
...I think that the word "intelligence" is a social one
that accumulates all sorts of things that one person
admires when observed in others and doesn't understand how to
do...
This seems like an extremely negative and defeatist thing to say.
What does it leave us in AI to do, but to ignore the very notion we
are supposedly trying to understand? What will motivate one line of
research rather than another, what can we use to judge the quality of
a piece of research, if we have no idea what it is we are after?
It seems to me that one plausible approach to AI is to present an
arguable account of what intelligence is about, and then to show that
some mechanism is intelligent according to that account. The account,
the "definition", of intelligence may not be intuitive to everyone at
first. But the performance of the mechanisms constructed in accord
with the account will constitute evidence that the account is correct.
(This is where the Turing test comes in, not as a definition of
intelligence, but as evidence for its presence.)
------------------------------
Date: Tue 1 Nov 83 13:10:32-EST
From: SUNDAR@MIT-OZ
Subject: parallelism and conciousness
[Forwarded by RickL%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.]
[...]
It seems evident from the recent conversations that the meaning of
intelligence is much more than mere 'survivability' or 'adaptability'.
Almost all the views expressed however took for granted the concept of
"time"-which,seems to me is 'a priori'(in the Kantian sense).
What do you think of a view of that says :intelligence is the ability of
an organism that enables it to preserve,propagate and manipulate these
'a priori'concepts.
The motivation for doing so could be a simple pleasure,pain mechanism
(which again I feel are concepts not adequately understood).It would
seem that while the pain mechanism would help cut down large search
spaces when the organism comes up against such problems,the pleasure
mechanism would help in learning,and in the acquisition of new 'a priori'
wisdom.
Clearly in the case of organisms that multiply by fission (where the line
of division between parent and child is not exactly clear)the structure
of the organism may be preserved .In such cases it would seem that the
organism survives seemingly forever . However it would not be considered
intelligent by the definition proposed above .
The questions that seem interesting to me therefore are:
1 How do humans acquire the concept of 'time'?
2 'Change' seem to be measured in terms of time (adaptation,survival etc
are all the presence or absense of change) but 'time' itself seems to be
meaningless without 'change'!
3 How do humans decide that an organism is 'intelligent ' or not?
Seems to me that most of the people in the AIList made judgements (the
amoeba , desert tortoise, cockroach examples )which should mean that
they either knew what intelligence was or wasn't-but it still isn't
exactly clear after all the smoke's cleared.
Any comments on the above ideas? As a relative novice to the field
of AI I'd appreciate your opinions.
Thanks.
--Sundar--
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Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1983 16:42 EST
From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Inscrutable Intelligence
Sure. I agree you want an account of what intelligence is "about".
When I complained about making a "definition" I meant
one of those useless compact thingies in dictionaries.
But I don't agree that you need this for scientific motivation.
Batali: do you really think Biologists need definitions of Life
for such purposes?
Finally, I simply don't think this is a compact phenomenon.
Any such "account", if brief, will be very partial and incomplete.
To expect a test to show that "the account is correct" depends
on the nature of the partial theory. In a nutshell, I still
don't see any use at all for
such definition, and it will lead to calling all sorts of
partial things "intelligence". The kinds of accounts to confirm
are things like partial theories that need their own names, like
heuristic search method
credit-assignment scheme
knowledge-representation scheme, etc.
As in biology, we simply are much too far along to be so childish as
to say "this program is intelligent" and "this one is not". How often
do you see a biologist do an experiment and then announce "See, this
is the secret of Life". No. He says, "this shows that enzyme
FOO is involved in degrading substrate BAR".
------------------------------
Date: 3 Nov 1983 14:45-PST
From: ISAACSON@USC-ISI
Subject: Re: Inscrutable Intelligence
I think that your message was really addressed to Minsky, who
already replied.
I also think that the most one can hope for are confirmations of
"partial theories" relating, respectively, to various aspects
underlying phenomena of "intelligence". Note that I say
"phenomena" (plural). Namely, we may have on our hands a broad
spectrum of "intelligences", each one of which the manifestation
of somewhat *different* mix of underlying ingredients. In fact,
for some time now I feel that AI should really stand for the
study of Artificial Intelligences (plural) and not merely
Artificial Intelligence (singular).
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1983 19:29 EST
From: BATALI%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Inscrutable Intelligence
From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ at MIT-MC.ARPA
do you really think Biologists need definitions of Life
for such purposes?
No, but if anyone was were claiming to be building "Artificial Life",
that person WOULD need some way to evaluate research. Remember, we're
not just trying to find out things about intelligence, we're not just
trying to see what it does -- like the biochemist who discovers enzyme
FOO -- we're trying to BUILD intelligences. And that means that we
must have some relatively precise notion of what we're trying to build.
Finally, I simply don't think this is a compact phenomenon.
Any such "account", if brief, will be very partial and incomplete.
To expect a test to show that "the account is correct" depends
on the nature of the partial theory. In a nutshell, I still
don't see any use at all for
such definition, and it will lead to calling all sorts of
partial things "intelligence".
If the account is partial and incomplete, and leads to calling partial
things intelligence, then the account must be improved or rejected.
I'm not claiming that an account must be short, just that we need
one.
The kinds of accounts to confirm
are things like partial theories that need their own names, like
heuristic search method
credit-assignment scheme
knowledge-representation scheme, etc.
But why are these thing interesting? Why is heuristic search better
than "blind" search? Why need we assign credit? Etc? My answer:
because such things are the "right" thing to do for a program to be
intelligent. This answer appeals to a pre-theoretic conception of
what intelligence is. A more precise notion would help us
assess the relevance of these and other methods to AI.
One potential reason to make a more precise "definition" of
intelligence is that such a definition might actually be useful in
making a program intelligent. If we could say "do that" to a program
while pointing to the definition, and if it "did that", we would have
an intelligent program. But I am far too optimistic. (Perhaps
"childishly" so).
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End of AIList Digest
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