Re: The problem of intelligence.

Lester Zick wrote:
A paradox is not only a puzzle but a seemingly contradictory one. I suppose we can brainstorm a few ways intelligence fits in there but lets just call it a problem and move on. :) 

No problem. I think the "contradictory" aspect I referred to was that
a tangible such as the brain produces intangible mental effects such
as the mind. That's what I see as paradoxical. It's curious to me that
we don't see our brains in action; what we "see" are various mental
effects or images produced by our brains. Those mental effects are
what most people refer to as intangibles because we can't find the
images in the brain. So if the brain is tangible then the imaging of
tangibles must be intangible. That's what I mean by intelligence and
to me that's a first class paradox.

I think I know the paradox you're referring to and where the tangible-intangible problem comes from. I think the issue is our method. We are, after all, just a pair of arm-chair "scientists" trying to guess our way to something meaningful. I don't mean to be critical here, this method works fine in many situations except ours is unique. What we are trying to guess the function of is ourselves! That is, we are trying to discover the workings of our "algorithm" through introspection. Unfortunately, nature equipped us with neither source code nor debug hooks so we are working backwards from tangible effects to intangible (through introspection) recipe.

By this line of reasoning, trying to answer the question "by what method do I do this?" with regard to mental effects by introspection alone will fail. However, this does not mean *all* efforts are doomed. What we may not observe we may still invent.

I don't think you would disagree that a "concrete" definition of intelligence (more on that later), capable of being used as a progress meter, would be very important. But we need to address the philosophical side of things first. 

Well I agree except the problem is scientific not philosophical. We
have a well defined problem: tangibles produced by an intangible
intelligence mechanized by a tangible brain. We know the images of
tangibles produced by a tangible brain are "out there". We just can't
find them "in here" in the brain. So we have to explain the transition
in mechanical terms. Philosophers have had their go at it to no avail.
It's a problem in mechanics not philosophy.

Explaining the transition within the biological brain would require far more knowledge about its inner workings that we have today. This path is closed to us.

Well I consider your original argument against "we'll know it when
we see it" techniques for assessing artificial intelligence perfectly
valid. And I am definitely not categorically opposed to defining
intelligence. But I'm definitely categorically opposed to defining
intelligence anyway we want just so we can get on with mechanizing
the definition without actually defining the mechanics of intelligence
just so we can say we've made progress on some arbitrary definition.

Granted the approach of the field of AI has been something to this effect with no relevant results. 

When I use the term "definition" with respect to intelligence I'm
referring to a description of the mechanics of intelligence and not
something pulled out of thin air just because we can measure it.


Yes, I know, I was agreeing. :)

The "pull something our of thin air and run with it" approach is the robotics way. Its failure is what I was referring to.

Well this is the paradox. If we had any plausible prospect of ever
seeing tangibles in the brain I might agree that what's involved is
merely a refinement of technique. But I don't see evidence of that.
There are definitely tangibles we see "out there" and we see them
through operations of a tangible brain. And yet we can't find any
tangibles corresponding to those sights in the brain. There is some
hope of finding corresponding tangible neurological processes and
states but not of finding little tangible images in the brain of what
is seen by the brain. So I doubt we see the problem of intelligence
itself, whatever it may be, in correct mechanical perspective.

We don't have any reason to rule out that it could become technologically possible to read off the material state of the brain. Then the problem would be one of interpretation. If the brain's "inner code" is cracked, the so-called "intangibles" become tangible. For this reason we can't say they are truly intangible, although inaccessible to us now. Of course this argument makes no practical difference.

The original objection says we can't "know it when we see it" unless we have some mechanical means of judging. I think our problem needs more definition. 

Yes but the issue is whether we merely need a refinement of definition
within existing technique or whether our mechanical perspective is
incorrect to begin with. Sure we need more and better definition but
the whole problem of tangible --> intangible doesn't go away as long
as we're only prepared to define the problem of intelligence in terms
of tangibles.

Is there another perspective, other than mechanical, which would work here? We are looking for a mechanical answer after all.

I never meant to say intelligence is intangible. 

Yes but I do. I don't see any apparent resolution to the problem of
intelligence in terms of tangible --> intangible strictly in terms of
tangibles alone. So unless you're prepared to "see" intelligence in
some tangible I doubt you can approach the problem successfully
in terms of tangibles without resort to some intangible mechanics.

My approach is to define what it is we *want* in terms of the tangible. That is, what would satisfy our idea of intelligence. Then we ought to work top-down to satisfy those conditions.

I think we need to take a stab at putting more definition on our problem. I mean, what are we looking for really? What sort of product would satisfy our goals? 

I agree. The difficulty is you and historically everyone else has
demanded a tangible solution to intangible intelligent effects
without being able to explain the transition. It's known as the
mind/body dichotomy in the literature. Once that transition is
identified mechanically the whole problem of intelligence vanishes
and technology takes over because we'll know what we're looking for
and what we're looking at.

The mind-body problem (as my hasty Wikipedia search reveals) relates to the relationship between mind and body. The big questions pertain to whether or not there is some kind of "mind-stuff" or if the entire thing is an effect of matter within the brain. Questions regarding consciousness fit in here as well.

I think for purposes of AI, for us to even say that it is possible for us to build a (truly) intelligent machine we must assume that regardless of the mind-body relationship, it must be possible to replicate intelligent function mechanically. Note that we don't mean to say we are replicating the human mind, we are intent on creating an /intelligent/ mind, a problem solving device which may little resemble humans.

* First and foremost, we are looking for an algorithm. We want this algorithm to run on a computer and exhibit certain properties. 

Okay.

* There may not be a single answer. There are likely many ways in which our constraints can be satisfied. There is no one "intelligence", what we are seeking may one of many different ways of doing the same thing. It is common in Computer Science to see completely different algorithms do the same thing optimally. 

I disagree. If we're looking for intelligence we need to find it first
and then contemplate what intelligence can do artificially.

Keep in mind the first point (to which you agreed). We are looking for an algorithm which produces certain effects. That doesn't mean there is only one such algorithm. You say we need to "find intelligence", but what makes you think there is only one such "thing"? Do all people think the same way and function by the same underlying principles? Do we really know?

* Our answer may not approximate human intelligence. The perennial example here is the bird and the airplane. Both fly, but which one makes more sense for us to use for human flight? It is likely that a top-down approach, working backwards from criteria, is the best way to approach the problem. Reverse-engineering the human brain is not practical today. 

I agree.

* Our answer is not the silver bullet. Humans are capable of a great variety of skills and tasks, but we should not be overly optimistic with our goals. What we create may only be capable of intelligence within a limited domain. We are looking for generality, but we should not expect to find it right away. 

Well here you're making conflicting assumptions: one, that we
approach the problem top-down and, two, there is no silver bullet.
If there is no silver bullet there is no top-down. As far as I can see
top-down requires a starting place in mechanical terms and that
implies some kind of silver bullet which I would characterize as a
tangible-intangible transition mechanics.

When I say "there is no silver bullet" I am talking about how we decide with what we will be satisfied. For example, here I state a number of functions that I expect from an intelligence. If we were to create an algorithm which displayed such functions in a general enough way to be useful but not general across *all* problems, we should be satisfied. The practical importance of the point is that we shouldn't discard seemingly sub-ideal ways of meeting our constraints because they are not perfectly general (if there is such a thing!)

* To define what properties we want to have, we need to pick the smallest set of traits with which we will be satisfied. There are many superfluous requirements that get placed on the problem. Ones such as "it must be reproducible in neurons", "it must be scalable", or "it must be built out of elements x, y, and z". If we heap on too many demands we will never find a solution, but then again, if we require too few we will not find an acceptable answer.

We can make all of these points without even touching on a definition for intelligence. But if we want to go further, we need to look at the defining traits of intelligence. What would we require? What qualities are we looking for? 

Well as far as I can tell the only defining trait for intelligence is
a tangible-intangible transition mechanics. Without that all you're
ever going to see are intelligent effects and not intelligence.

Actually that is all we need. An algorithm displaying intelligent effects to a sufficient degree would suffice.

* Agency. Intelligence is a quality that pertains to an agent. Agency requires that there exist input signals from and output signals to an environment. These signals need to be sufficient for whatever task we want to accomplish.

*  Cognition. The agent should be capable of...
  ...accepting an arbitrary goal within the environment.
  ...accepting relevant information about its environment.
  ...planning actions that would lead to a more favorable position.
  ...creating sub-goals and plans for investigating them.
  ...abstracting, generalizing, and classifying information.
  ...generating relevant information from basic environmental inputs.
  ...reasoning about the environment from known information.

Most of these requirements are about mental effects. If we look at each item individually it is not impossible to think of algorithms that could do this. 

Definitely. Historically though the issue has not been the automation
of intelligent effects but artificial mechanization of intelligence
per se. We have all kinds of machines to automate effects but not to
automate the basic mechanism mainly because we don't know what it is.

We have machines that automated specific processes. We have no machine that automates *all* effects of intelligence. That is the goal, the truly intelligent machine that produces all expected intelligent effects.

-- Risujin
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... what most people refer to as intangibles because we can't find the ... images in the brain. ... tangibles must be intangible. ... It's a problem in mechanics not philosophy. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... If we proceed empirically by studying the process in others we have to proceed via tangibles to study an intangible. ... Our study may not succeed but the success of studying tangible effects will not shed light on the mechanics of an intangible process. ... I agree that simply prospecting for intelligence within the brain is hopeless without some mechanical recognition of what it is we're looking for and I've argued against the neurological approach in ai for many years for exactly this reason. ... I see it as a measurable tangible which doesn't shed light on the mechanics of intangibles. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... >>>we have to proceed via tangibles to study an intangible. ... >> That's only a valid position if intangibles were not tangible. ... >> universe (and the mind) led to the common false belief that intangibles ... The mind and the brain are one and the same. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... And I consider the intangible mechanics of transition between what's ... >>>Explaining the transition within the biological brain would require far ... >> to considering mechanics in terms of objective tangibles. ... How do you approach the problem of intangibles ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The problem of intelligence.
    ... > we have to proceed via tangibles to study an intangible. ... > the intangible process itself and not tangible effects. ... That's only a valid position if intangibles were not tangible. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)