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Article 5322 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: erich@dehn.mth.pdx.edu (Erich Boleyn)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Quantitative measure of Intelligence
Message-ID: <erich.704535714@dehn>
Date: 29 Apr 92 08:21:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: dehn.erich.704535714
References: <1992Apr23.083023.14050@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg>
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eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) writes:

>Alan Turing test is only a subjective test. I have developed a way of
>measuring Intelligence quantitatively using Information Theory.
> Information theory just measures the non-determinism of the occurrence of a
> symbol. This symbol defines the information. The objection is that it does not
...[deleted]...

   The test proposed by Turing was vague for a specific reason.  The reason
is of course that people judge whether another person is "smart", "likable",
etc. by what they percieve about them on several "levels" (if I can get away
with that term in this context).  Only a small surface part of this is any
rational systematic probing for many people.  Consider interactions with
a stranger vs. with those of friends.  A conversation with a stranger
includes finding points of common reference (among other things), a kind
of tip-toeing around each other to determine a sort of relative dominance,
comparative social skills, etc.  OK, I get the image of two dogs warily
sniffing each other out ;-).  With a friend, many conversations include
bits and peices of very well-established patterns, rituals if you will,
which form a kind of comfortable environment.  Even people who seem to be
doing random things with each other each time are usually in some sense
following a kind of well-established pattern with each other.

   Probably the best example of this kind of thing is when you can
"feel" when something is "wrong" with a friend, or even a nearly new
aquaintence.  Arguments of Xenophobia fall into a much stronger and more
rigorous version of this kind of thing.  Basically, unconciously, many
of us to a larger or lesser degree have a constant Turing test going on
on a kind of social level.

   In his own way Turing made a most brilliant observation in proposing
the test, since (IMHO) it is a nearly natural (and to some extent
ubiquitous) function of current human social behavior.

>	Information theory had been used extensively for analysis of 
>communcation channels. A few attempts had been made by Saridis and Goodman 
>to use Information theory to measure Intelligence but what they are actually 
>doing is to measure the knowledge or throughput of the intelligent machine.
>	There lies the controversy of my theory. I separate Intelligence from
>Knowledge and Solution(throughput). Current AI beliefs defines intelliigence in
>combinations of knowledge and solutions. This method looks like an electrical 
>engineer trying to understand an electrical black box by measuring power only.
...[deleted]...

   How can you separate Intelligence from "thoughput", so to speak?  Unless
we have a way of measuring the brain directly, say via a kind of real-time
pattern scanning (speaking of non-invasive methods, of course), that
"throughput" is in a sense all we have.  Sure, knowing a lot about the
basic structure of a human brain, societal formation pressures, etc.  one
could in principle determine an exceptional amount about the internal
minute-to-minute operation (or whatever) of someone's brain.  But how can
we otherwise judge this?  (okay, I'm begging the question a bit here)  It
is certainly hard to judge the internal workings from just the outside,
but sometimes you just don't have any better tools to work with.

   A better question to put forward may be to ask if it is even relevant --
in other then a philisophical sense -- to even be concerned about this fact.
Turing had a very good point in considering something that could pass the
test as being for all intensive purposes intelligent since in the end do
you really need any more?  I mean, if it functions exactly as you'd like
it to (in this case patterned on aspects of human intellectual behavior),
what does it matter?  If a "real AI" can compose poems, music, mathematical
theorems, etc.  as well as many people...  or dare I say, even if it would
at some point be possible to be better than nearly anybody at these tasks,
do you need anything more?  Another interesting side-question would be
if you'd actually *want* something that had an emotional underpinning/
intentional basis that was identical to a human?  I mean, hey, aren't there
a bunch of us around already ;-).

>	The essence of my argument is that an unpredictable machine exibits
>more intelligence than a predictable one but both can come up with the same
>solution. Obviously the intelligent machine needs more reasoning steps than
>the stupid onebut the stupid one already has the knowledge (stored
>intelligence).

   This seems a vaguely reasonable, but not certain assumption.  The flight-
path of a fly is much more unpredictable (during the direction-shifts) than
most humans walking paths would be.  You second statement is not quite
so warranted, however.  It would be admitted by some that it seems intuitively
clear that a large brain does a lot more "processing" (whatever that may
be) than a much smaller brain doing similar tasks, however this is at best
a gross generalization.  Studies done on human students at mentally intensive
tasks such as taking tests over topics considered "hard" like physics, etc.
found that the brain-activity of those very skilled in the area went up
only slightly when working on those tasks, while the unskilled ones brain-
activity shot up to enormous levels, and they rarely even completed it
correctly.  There have been cognitive studies showing that as far as
can be determined, chess masters, for example, use far *fewer* steps
when thinking about what moves to make than do ameteurs.  It seems to be
a function of radically changed perception of the problem more than anything
else.  I know that with mathematics and such when speaking to a friend who
is having trouble at it, the number of steps that that person goes through
is very large, and usually, a tad on the futile side, while I can very
easily view the problem in such a way as to get almost right to the answer.

>	I have difficulty in publishing this theory but I badly need to refer
>to it. We do not have an internal report system at NTU. If someone had known
>of anypublication that refer to the same idea, please inform me. If someone
>needs moredetail on this idea I am willing to send him copies of the letters
>that I had tried to be published. Hopefully someone could develop it further
>so thst it is suitable for publication.
...[deleted]...
>	Or I could be grossly wrong. So far all the editors had not mentioned my
>errors. They only say that it is too short/undeveloped. I am not interested in
>developing it further than what I need. I am basically a circuit designer. The
>theory is already useful to me as it is. In fact I am able to explain the Truth
>table and Chinese in a room, problems mentioned in this group.
...[deleted]...

   There have been several attempts to use information density to
measure intelligence level.  One of best kind of ideas (IMHO) I have heard of
is more of a probabilistic result than an absolute measure (that particular
idea has not been worked out rigorously enough yet, though), as one can
not really be *certain* that a signal contains the information of interest,
but can just apply occam's razor and go from there.

   A sufficiently well-worked out statistical theory could well be
a fairly consistent indicator of intelligent activity, but as to it
*explaining* it...  I am very interested in anything that you have on the
topic.

   Erich

--
             "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is."
    / --  Erich Stefan Boleyn  -- \       --=> *Mad Genius wanna-be* <=--
   { Honorary Grad. Student (Math) } Internet E-mail: <erich@dehn.mth.pdx.edu>
    \  Portland State University  /      WARNING: INTERESTED AND EXCITABLE


