SPRINGBOARD INTELLIGENCE
Is intelligence calculators, if-else clauses, or probabilistic algorithms ?
With calculators we could do computations quickly, and so they seemed intelligent; but of course the source of intelligence wasn’t in the calculator. Similarly, with if-else clauses we could approximate ‘intelligence’, and this was symbolic ai, which seemed intelligent, and our searching after intelligence was in logical systems and programs (lisp, scheme, etc). Now, we have probabilistic systems and they approximate ‘intelligence’, and in the same way we think we’ve arrived at ‘intelligence’, and that intelligence is surely probabilistic. Is intelligence probabilistic, though ? Do we actually have ‘intelligence’ now ?
What is intelligence ? Inter (between) leger (to chose, pick out) from PIE leg (to gather), so something like picking out words, or choosing and gathering, etc, and that comes from intellect which was the latin version of nous, but that can be reduced to something like ‘awareness’. Well, if we root it in awareness, then it shifts from where we’re at now. What is awareness ? One can be aware with the visual data stream turned off, and indeed the more the other data streams are turned off the more the mind can be sensitive to it’s movements. Is that the source of the down stream crystallizations which we call intelligence ? For instance the neural circuits that create the language and the mathematics, and so on ? Is it rooted in awareness ? Can there be mere awareness, i.e. awareness, abstracted from the surrounding activities of the mind ? If not, then do we track intelligence down further upstream to an indivisible quality of mind ? But is mind separate from matter ? We tend to say yes, but why ? Where do we draw the line ? Where do we separate them out ? Does one come before the other ? All evidence that we have says no. We invent the words to separate them out. It’s given to us at once (what is is given at once, and all separation is downstream). Ok, we retract intelligence into awareness, and retract that into this undifferentiated matter-mind.
Well, so then do we have intelligence or are we simply automating some of the conseuqences of intelligence? We thought calculators and rule based systems were intelligence, and then we didn’t. Now we think that probabilistic algorithms are intelligence. Are they ? It seems that we’re forced to rethink intelligence as a child of wisdom. Intelligence without wisdom is not intelligent.