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"It's not flying, it's falling... with style"

I always fall with style and I always do it on purpose :|

There are going to be gray areas of course, but the point I'm making is that if it's hard to argue something isn't flying (respectively, intelligent) then it's probably flying (resp. intelligent). If it's hard to tell then it's probably not. I'm suggesting that intelligence, like flying, should be very immediately obvious.

For example, you can't miss the fact that a five-year old child is intelligent and you can't miss the fact that a stone is not. There may be all sorts of things in between for which we can't be sure, or whose intelligence depends on definition, or point of view, etc. but when something is intelligent then it should leave us no doubt that it is. Or, if you want to see it this way: if something is as intelligent as a five-year old child then it should leave us no doubt that it is.

I'm basically arguing for placing the bar high enough that when it is passed, we can be fairly certain we're not mistaken.

>> I can't disagree more. Or maybe I actually agree.

I find myself in that disposition often :)

> when something is intelligent then it should leave us no doubt that it is.

I strongly disagree. There are many reasons we might not recognize its intelligence, such as:

- it operates on a different timescale than we do.

- it operates at a different size scale than we do.

- we don't understand its language, its methods, or its goals

- Cartesian-like ideological blindness ("only humans have experience, all other things are automata, no matter how much they seem otherwise")

Throughout human history, certain people have even managed to doubt the intelligence of other groups of humans.

Except for "Cartesian blindness" (an interesting term) the situations where you say we wouldn't recognise intelligence are so far fantastical in the sense that they require a kind of intelligence that we can only imagine might exist outside the realm of our experience.

But why should current debate have anything to do with all those situations? By analogy, suppose there exists a race of alien birds on a faraway planet that can fly in a way that we wouldn't recognise as flying. Perhaps they have an antigravity gland or poop exotic matter that sticks to their butts and lets them move around without touching the ground. Does that affect our ability to recognise flight when we see it on Earth? I don't think so. When you see e.g. an eagle, fly, you know it's flying, regardless of whether anything else is, or might be conceived as, flying, or not.

Equally, does the possibility of an alien intelligence like no intelligence we have ever seen before make any difference to how we recognise intelligence here on Earth and right now? The debate is about the intelligence of computers. Should we consider the possibility that computers are about to develop an alien kind of intelligence like no intelligence we have ever seen? I know there's such a current of thought in various circles but it doesn't seem to be based on anything but wishful thinking (or dreadful thinking?).

As to "Cartesian blindness" and racism etc - science is self-correcting. Even if we spend some time confused about what is and isn't intelligence, we get there in the end. The question is how we identify intelligence in the here and now, with what we know and understand about the world in the present.

I think it does matter that we admit other kinds of flying or intelligence because then we allow the possibility of having a blind spot.

We already have alien intelligences on this planet that are not often getting invoked in discussions of the possible unfamiliarity of the difference of computers. Let's take the octopus distributed thinking or the hive's collective intelligence. They could shine a light on how computers do or don't work, yet how many people are holding the torch?

I think self-correcting of science can be nice, but the acknowledge of racism operates on cultural scales of decades and centuries. The corrected discussions are likely to appear long after computer thinking breakthroughs which happen on the scale of years to decades. So you're right, but that doesn't matter today. But I admit I'm not sure if that's what you meant here.

>> They could shine a light on how computers do or don't work, yet how many people are holding the torch?

Scant few, unfortunately. I think in the AI community there is a general agreement that bees and ants have some kind of intelligence but I don't see anyone doing much about it, like using it as a model for AI (although note e.g. Ant Colony Optimisation and other biologically inspired algorithms). For example, I have seriously considered applying for funding for a project titled "Arthropod-Like Intelligence" that would seek to create an artificial agent (a robot of some sort) with autonomous capabilities at the level of a spider. Unfortunately, every time I start to write up the proposal I immediately imagine the ridicule it -and I- would be subjected to by any funding committee and fellow researchers in AI and I give up. So yes, the current agreement about what counts as intelligence is limiting to the advancement of science. But there is some progress, slow as it is- thanks to people bolder than myself.

With octopi I think it's a different matter. People generally don't get to see how octopi behave. Once they're shown examples, like in videos etc, I think most are convinced. So it's more an element of surprise, rather than a real resistance to the idea. I think the debate is more on different aspects of let's say broader cognition, like self-awareness, the ability to feel pain, etc. Again I think the safe bet here is to adopt the default position that all animals are intelligent, self-aware and can feel pain, since there's no reason that humans should be special in that respect. But, really, it's not my field so my opinion doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

>> The corrected discussions are likely to appear long after computer thinking breakthroughs which happen on the scale of years to decades.

Yeah, unfortunately science takes a very long time. But it works in the end and there's no better way we know. I don't guess I have to argue about that though.

>but when something is intelligent then it should leave us no doubt that it is.

Not that long ago, a whole lot of humans (the majority in some continents) asserted other a group of other humans were not intelligent so strongly they purchased them as property and treated them worse than even farm animals, so i think you can basically throw this one out the window.

Who said that slaves weren't intelligent? I know they were probably treated as subhuman, but as not having intelligence? Like a rock or a piece of wood? I don't believe that was the case.

What probably happened, and still happens, is that some people underestimate the intelligence of other people and think they're not as intelligent as themselves, not that they don't have intelligence.

I'm not sure why a rock or piece of wood is the bar here. The fact is nearly no-one in the Americas would call or describe Sub-Saharan Africans as Intelligent.

Thomas Jefferson who generally seemed to oppose slavery says this in his book, "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1785):

"In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection."

"Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous."

Doesn't even sound like he's talking about the same species. We can scarcely agree on the intelligence of other humans. Let's not even get into the topic of animals.

So the idea that intelligence will manifest and we'll all just see it and agree...Yeah No.

>> "Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous."

He's saying they're of inferior "reasoning" (but equal in memory). That's hardly saying they're not intelligent or recognising them as not intelligent.

I don't think you will find anyone saying what you think someone's saying. "Not intelligent" is indeed a rock or a piece of wood. "Inferior" is a different concept.

"Inferior", "sub-human", "feeble-minded", sure, people keep saying things like that for other humans. But, "not intelligent" in the sense of "can't use language", "can't use tools", "can't tie own shoelaces", that would be very hard to maintain in the face of very easy to make observations. Which, you know, is exactly my point.

Are you using "intelligent" to mean "very smart" or something similar? That's not what I'm saying. I'm really just pointing to the difference between 0 intelligence, like a rock, and undeniable intelligence, like a 5-year old child.

Well you say, if we're arguing whether it's intelligent or not, it probably isn't.

Ok i guess the argument then...So what are these obvious signs of Intelligence the machines in question are not displaying?

From the few you gave as example,

"can't use language" - Obviously not a problem

"can't use tools" - Digital tools, Some physical tools is certainly possible today

"can't tie own shoelaces" - Don't know any animal that can do this and animals pass your bar of intelligence.

Sure we're having endless arguments about the Intelligence of Sota LLMs today but almost none of it has anything to do with observable, testable capabilities.

In other words, the problem of these debates isn't that people are disagreeing seeing both the bird and plane have willful sustained airtime (aka flying). It's that they've seen both and decided for entirely arbitrary reasons to label one, "real flying" and the other, "fake flying".

And if you then ask the reasonable question, "Which properties separate the so called 'real flight' from 'fake flight' and how do we test for it?", then nobody seems to have any clue.

Above you're arguing for one side of the debate. I'm arguing that as long as there is a debate the safest bet is to adopt the default, null position: it's not flying; it's not intelligent.

To summarise my argument again: if we can all agree that something is intelligent, then it probably is. If we can't, then it probably isn't, especially, I would add, if there is substantial disagreement.

One motivation for this is to avoid an unending quest for the right definition. Once we can all agree what (artificial) intelligence is, it will be much easier to agree to a definition. But while we're all looking at the same thing and can't agree on what it is, how can we agree on a definition, and then use it to support one or the other side of the debate?

Take human intelligence. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that humans are intelligent, except perhaps for the purpose of being contrary, or being a philosopher[1]. We may not know what "intelligent" means, but we can agree that whatever it is, it's something that humans have. Yes, that's an arbitrary decision, but as long as we can agree on it, it doesn't matter that it's arbitrary: it matters that there is consensus, based on common experience, and we all know what we're talking about. We can't get to a definition of a phenomenon before we all agree that it is there: we all agreed that fire is fire, water is water and ice is ice, a long time before we had any sort of commonly agreed definitions of them.

"I can't put my finger on it but I know it when I see it"- that's a very simple way to avoid discussions that lead nowhere.

And there are way too many discussion that lead nowhere in AI.

Edit: btw, in research the discussions are much more focused. E.g. "LLMs can plan": that's a concrete, testable claim. No reason to define intelligence to resolve it. Much more progress is made this way than by endlessly chasing our tails about what is or isn't intelligent.

___________

[1] The purpose of science is to pose questions and answer them. The purpose of philosophy is to pose questions and question them.

How much of a consensus is there though, when as soon as you start digging at the edges, the consensus dissolves? And the edges are boundaries of the pool of the experiences we know. What about the experiences we don't know? What if we start considering not only agents with a physical body, but also add a dimension of agents without one (considering that the ways we recognize intelligence in animals is by the way they move)? Then our entire discussion jumps to the border, and the consensus is nowhere to be found, making the heuristic - again - biased towards the familiar.

No, I think we need a better heuristic than consensus. The consequences of a bad heuristics are, at best, wasting time, but at worst, pulling the trigger on something heinous because it was insufficiently understood.

I don't think that hideous things, like eugenics or Nazi racism, happen because of a lack of understanding. They happen because people have their heads up their butts with megalomaniac ideas about the world and their place in it. The "Master Race" was not a misunderstanding, it was some people wanting to be better than everyone else and making up, out of whole cloth -and no empirical evidence at all- that they were. There certainly wasn't universal consensus about it btw, just between Nazis.

I agree that there are dangers in trusting consensus as a mechanism for advancement of knowledge, and I see your point about risking losing focus on the border. But I think it is also very important to have a common body of knowledge that we can all agree on. Take flying again: nobody disputes the fact that planes are flying (again, nobody who isn't just being contrary). We can work out the gray areas in time and they don't necessarily make progress impossible. E.g. maybe we can't agree on whether hovercrafts fly, but we can still make them and use them.

So there is a limiting effect, like I point out in my other comment, but it is not a hard lock on progress. And I think that avoiding endless philosophical discussions is a big advantage.

If there is a better heuristic then I'm happy to embrace it btw. But, is there?

Hideous things can be done by evil people, but also accidentally by well-meaning people when they don't realize what the stakes are. How many people stop being racist only because they leave the environment where racism was prevalent and they get exposed to a different heuristic on human worth?

There's a paper discussing heuristics for determining the moral worth (not intelligence) of being which advocates the precautionary principle: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/AIRights2...

> avoid acting heinously by the standards of any reasonable ethical principle that draws a significant proportion of well-informed, thoughtful theorists

Thanks for the link. I generally agree with the premises, though not necessarily the utilitarian treatment. For me it goes without saying that if we create AI's (that we can all agree are) as intelligent as humans we will have to treat them just as we treat humans. Which kind of defeats their purpose: most people who want to create AI think of them as superhuman machine slaves as far as I've seen.

> Your criterion would suggest the answer of "no" to any of those cases, even though those cover much of the same use cases as flying, and possibly some new, more interesting ones.

Is it a problem though? Their existence are unrelated to how we categorize them.

That matters only in communication. “if everybody agrees” lowers/removes the risk of miscommunication.

If “hovercraft is flying” for you, but not for 50% the world, it makes it somewhat more difficult to communicate. (Easily solved with some qualifications, but that requires admission the questionability of “hovercraft is flying”)

> you're limiting the definition to that which is familiar, not that which is interesting.

You made an Interesting point - good food for thought.

Counterpoint: It seems natural and useful that only similar things get to use same word.

> And I don't think an AGI must be limited …

Could you expand on why does it matter and what would be impacted by such lenient (or strict) classification?

I think it matters merely by the way we set our expectations relative to what is going to come - and what has come already. I'm feeling an undercurrent of thought that is implying: this is not X (intelligence, understanding, whatever), so there's no need to consider it seriously.

In the same vein: https://eschwitz.substack.com/p/strange-intelligence-strange...

> I'm feeling an undercurrent of thought that is implying: this is not X, so there's no need to consider it seriously.

True. I doubt that field experts are directly affected by the naming, but indirect effect might come via less knowledgable (AI wise) financial decision makers.

I see a risk that those decision makers (and society) would be mislead if they were promised AGI (based on their “strict” understanding, what’s in the movies), but received AGI (based on “relaxed” meaning). Informed consent is usually good.

Though surely that can be resolved with more public discourse; maybe “relaxed” version will become the default expectation.