Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 26
Intelligence/Pinker: Implications from knowledge - but only from the relevant.
>Relevance.
I 84
Intelligence/Pylyshyn: stones are smarter than cats because they fly away when you kick them - (description-dependent).
>Description-dependence.
Pinker: that emerges from information, not from the matter.
>Information/Pinker,
>Psychological theories on intelligence.
>Information processing.
- - -

Brockman I 108
Intelligence/Pinker: [it is a] misconception (…) to think of intelligence as a boundless continuum of potency, a miraculous elixir with the power to solve any problem, attain any goal. The fallacy leads to nonsensical questions like when an AI will “exceed human-level intelligence,” and to the image of an “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) with God-like omniscience and omnipotence.
Intelligence is a contraption of gadgets: software modules
Brockman I 109
that acquire, or are programmed with, knowledge of how to pursue various goals in various domains.
>Software.
People are equipped to find food, win friends and influence people,(…). Computers may be programmed to take on some of these problems (like recognizing faces), not to bother with others (like charming mates), and to take on still other problems that humans can’t solve (like simulating the climate or sorting millions of accounting records). The problems are different, and the kinds of knowledge needed to solve them are different.


Pinker, S. “Tech Prophecy and the Underappreciated Causal Power of Ideas” in: Brockman, John (ed.) 2019. Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press.