# As far as AI, is it possible that intelligence is actually much more simple than we originally thought **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [December 24, 2024, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-far-as-ai-is-it-possible-that-intelligence-is-actually-much-more-simple-than-we-originally-thought/1012130 "2024-12-24T20:10:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 58
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2024, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-far-as-ai-is-it-possible-that-intelligence-is-actually-much-more-simple-than-we-originally-thought/1012130/58 "2024-12-31T09:27:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I’m sorry you feel I’m “accusing” you unfairly, and maybe the problem is that we’re just talking past each other. There’s really no ‘feeling’ about it; calling my words a ‘disingenuous distortion’ _is_ an accusation. The question is whether it’s _accurate_, not whether it’s accusatory. > [@wolfpup](#): > > It’s pretty clear to me what the OP was asking about, but let’s not make this argument about micro-analyzing the nuances of the OP’s words; this is not a Papal proclamation. The general thrust of this thread and the reasonable question here is whether or not contemporary AI has achieved “human level intelligence”, which to me very obviously refers to a human level of intelligence **in solving a specific class of problem** , and nothing at all to do with AGI. Still it’s generally considered good form to keep a thread on topic. Even if you’re not willing to assent regarding the explicit formulation ‘human level intelligence’, the OP also asked about AI’s IQ, which is a measure intended to quantify intelligence in the form of the _g_-factor, which takes its name exactly from the word ‘general’. Furthermore, there seems to be little of interest in asking whether machines have achieved or surpassed human equivalence in specific circumscribed tasks: obviously they have, centuries ago (indeed, possibly millennia ago, if you’re willing to count the abacus or Antikythera mechanism or what have you). That’s after all why we build them: because they can augment specifically circumscribed human capabilities, like e.g. arithmetic, beyond what would be possible for the individual human. If current AI were perceived as just more of the same, there would hardly be any discussion. But the promise—and threat—of it as these discussions go is the whole-sale replacement of human labor, for which it would first have to be whole-sale equivalent to human performance: i.e. equal to human level intelligence. That, if any, is the interesting question at issue. > [@wolfpup](#): > > Maybe I’m being overly cynical here, but you have in the past been exceptionally dismissive of AI, **[starting a whole thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-chatgpt-doesnt-understand/980404)** about how ChatGPT doesn’t really “understand” anything, and IIRC being equally dismissive of the whole idea of computational intelligence I’m not ‘dismissive’ of anything; in fact, in this very thread I’ve admitted my surprise at o3’s performance regarding the FrontierMath-test. I don’t dismiss this in the slightest. You also seem to be alleging that I oppose computationalist views out of some intrinsic distaste, perhaps caused by misguided belief in human specialness, or ensouledness, or God’s favor, or whatever. But I’ve come to the position I now hold kicking and screaming—I started out believing computationalism to be obvious: [here’s me arguing](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-computer-self-awareness-possible/582787/71) for conscious, creative computers. It’s just that I eventually realized there are huge problems with that position which I found I could not _dismiss_ easily. So, I am where I am because I have encountered arguments that didn’t seem to leave any different, honest opinion on the table. The thread you link, for instance, discusses a mathematical argument to the effect that the bare structure of language—words (or tokens) and their relations—fails to uniquely specify its intended model, i.e. a mapping of terms to things in the world. For any such model, it’s possibly to construct another one, such that the terms now refer to entirely different things. In other words, there’s no fact of the matter whether an LLM means _mouse_ or _house_ when it uses the word ‘mouse’. This argument isn’t wholly my own, I essentially just applied it to LLMs in [my entry](https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/home#:~:text=Interstitial%20Realism%3A%20Science,Download%20File) into the last essay competition by the Foundational Questions Institute FQxI. The argument was first formulated by [Putnam](https://philpapers.org/browse/the-model-theoretic-argument), and its original form goes back to [Newman’s objection](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1093/bjps/axn051?journalCode=bjps) to Russell’s structural realism. However, that argument is really just a special case; what made me skeptical of computationalism in the first place is the famous class of triviality arguments, originated, again, by Hilary Putnam, with [my own version](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-020-09522-x) showcasing an explicit construction that details that computation isn’t some inherent, objective aspect to a system, but a question of how the system is used (by concrete example of using one and the same system, at the same time, to perform different computations in exactly the same manner). Thus, there is no fact of the matter that any system, in and of itself, specifically performs a particular computation, and hence, in particular not the hypothetical computation producing a mind. Finally, I have [tried to meet](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-021-00467-w) the explanatory challenges posed by human consciousness, and produced a model that explicitly depends on undecidable propositions, and hence, could not be implemented on any computer, even if the notion of computation were perfectly objective. So I’m brought to skepticism about computationalism not just willy-nilly, but by the combination of (to me, at least) convincing a priori arguments against its possibility, and the a posteriori creation of a model that actually does incorporate non-computable elements. Of course, all of this is provisional: better arguments may yet come up to make this all moot. But until they do, simply dismissing these issues would be intellectually dishonest. > [@wolfpup](#): > > Computational intelligence is not just the foundation of AI, but an important part (though only a part) of the model of human cognition put forward over past decades by many highly respected researchers working at the intersection of cognitive science and AI, like Jerry Fodor, Hilary Putnam, David Marr, and many others. So why are you happily pointing to the authority of Hilary Putnam in defense of computationalism, while ignoring his turn away from the idea? If you’re happy to follow him in (after all, the whole thing was basically his idea), why not continue after him out again? > [@wolfpup](#): > > My argument against it is the same basic one put forward by Marvin Minsky 60 years ago, and by Alan Turing long before that: “If it acts intelligent, then it **is** intelligent” Even if I agreed to that—and there are trivial objections to it, such as the famous lookup table, and seeming intelligent simply by pure chance—that just bolsters my point: for then if it fails to act intelligent, it also **isn’t** intelligent. > [@wolfpup](#): > > Minsky’s particular frustration was with those who “looked under the covers”, thought that they more or less grasped the general principle of how a particular AI works, and declared that it was “just a trick”. And yet, Minsky [also predicted](https://aiws.net/the-history-of-ai/this-week-in-the-history-of-ai-at-aiws-net-marvin-minsky-was-quoted-in-life-magazine-in-from-three-to-eight-years-we-will-have-a-machine-with-the-general-intelligence-of-an-average-human-b/), in 1970, that “in from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being”. You’re very fond of trotting out Dreyfus’ misses, but for some reason always seem to elide that his opponents were often far more off-base. > [@wolfpup](#): > > As Minsky said, “when you explain, you explain away”. That’s really not true. There are two kinds of explanations—debunking and non-debunking. A debunking explanation is something like what happened with the recent spate of unusual drone sightings over New Jersey, which really just turned out to be perfectly usual drones, misidentifications, and a few parents testing out the equipment they got their kids for Christmas. But there are also non-debunking explanations where further knowledge just bolsters our understanding of the original phenomena, e.g. the explanation of thermodynamics in terms of statistical mechanics. The prior terms remain perfectly valid, but are grounded in more fundamental notions. The trouble is just that so far, all explanations of artificial ‘intelligence’ have been debunking ones. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-far-as-ai-is-it-possible-that-intelligence-is-actually-much-more-simple-than-we-originally-thought/1012130)._