The intelligence of the AIs we build today is hyper specialized in extremely narrow tasks — like playing Go, or classifying images into 10,000 known categories. The intelligence of an octopus is specialized in the problem of being an octopus. The intelligence of a human is specialized in the problem of being human.
What would happen if we were to put a freshly-created human brain in the body of an octopus, and let in live at the bottom of the ocean? Would it even learn to use its eight-legged body? Would it survive past a few days? We cannot perform this experiment, but we do know that cognitive development in humans and animals is driven by hardcoded, innate dynamics.
Chollet’s long-form consideration of the ‘intelligence explosion’ is exactly the long, deep dive assessments of artificial intelligence I wish we had more of. In particular, his appreciation for the relationship between ‘intelligence’ and ‘mind’ and ‘socio-situationality’ struck me as meaningful and helpful, insofar as it recognizes the philosophical dimensions of intelligence that is often disregarded, forgotten about, or simply not appreciated by those who talk generally about strong AI systems.
Excited Pixels 