Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You can't define intelligence by how people in any one point in time would have responded to it. A calculator is AI to people of the 19th century, but not to us. It's only in the passing of time, if something that is thought to be intelligent still seems intelligent long after it is introduced, that we might have a contender.


A moving definition of intelligence isn't particularly useful though if we are trying to establish if something classifies as intelligent or not.

But I think we have at least moved from a state of computers that are less 'intelligent' than a fish, to more 'intelligent' than a dog (assuming by intelligent we mean 'ability to solve problems, and to apply knowledge to novel situations' - i.e. while GPT-4 will make illegal chess moves, it would make less illegal moves than a well-trained dog).

We have moved that quickly from fish to dog, so we need to be careful to not let hubris make us think we are that much more special! Dog-intelligence to human-intelligence is a big leap, but maybe not as much of a leap as fish to dog? Or at least dog to ape and ape to human?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: