I've long been interested in A.I. As a kid I dreamed of having an attic full of tape recorders that when turned on in sequences could say words. One word per recorder. This was long before th days of speak and spell. I thought at that time, that if I got that far, then the rest of the A.I. would be obvious. Of course the definition of intelligence moves as rapidly as thought and always farther and farther away. At one time, a chess playing computer would have been thought of as proof of intelligence, but within milliseconds of it working the definition moved beyond.

Currently my ideas of intelligence has evolved to the point where it no longer matches the normal society's views. My belief is that intelligence has a very specific purpose, depending on the needs of the creature. A cheetah is built for speed, and in my view is intelligent in the ways of cheetah speed. (See? It's a different definition). I believe that intelligence is strongly linked to the physical being. If this is accepted as true, then it follows that intelligence is also strongly linked to how that physical being interacts with the environment. If you cannot interact with your environment you have no intelligence. This can be shown experimentally with animals, deprived of sensory input and output. They cannot cope with the world.

So far, my definition for intelligence is I = i * o (where i is input, and o is output).

But obviously the ability to think problems through without input or output is also a sign of intelligence. If you can plan something in your head, and then carry out that plan, you have shown you have intelligence. Even if you do not carry out the plan, someone else could take the plan you made and carry it out, so the planning itself is indicative of intelligence.

So now my definition for intelligence is I = i * o * p (where p is the ability to plan)

A chess program is intelligent in the ways of chess. A chess program has I/O (limited to the chess board) and has the ability to plan. So a chess program fits my definition of intelligence. Humans are intelligent in many ways, and this is a secondary definition. Einstien has problems with simple math, like counting change, but was able to think outside the box and come up with amazingly accurate ideas of how the world worked. So was he intelligent? In some ways very much, but in others, not so much. For example, in the matter of cheetah speed, he wasn't very intelligent at all. In the matter of inventiveness, he was highly intelligent. He was also able to interact with the world in the same way as most humans do. So intelligence is defined as the ability to interact with the world in multiple ways. He was considered above average intelligence because he could not only interact with the world like a human does, but also think in ways beyond most people.

The multiple ways of being intelligent I call N. So my final definition of intelligence is:
I = i * o * p * N
where i is input, o is output, p is the ability to plan, and N is multiple ways of doing these things.

In the realm of AI, this means,
input is multiple sensors.
output is the ability to interact with your environment.
p is the ability to see the relationship between the input and the output
N is the ability to see relationships within the relationships.

On a more practical level I've been working on a library for AI for quite a while. I'm thinking of scrapping it (yet again) and starting over, keeping the best parts and carrying on. I'll talk more about it in the next article.

Please log in or register new account to post your opinion on this page

Other articles you might like: