The Wrong I / Comments on Artifical Intelligence. Part 1: Changing the Game

In our quest to make machines as intelligent as or more intelligent than humans,
the first step is to change and reduce the definition of intelligence so that it fits machines rather than humans.

 

 

A definition of intelligence is of course difficult if not impossible to agree on.

Wikipedia offers this general consense:

“one’s capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, planning, creativity and problem solving. It can be more generally described as the ability to perceive information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.”

We push our definition towards the data centric, dropping aspects of intelligence such as

emotional intelligence, social intelligence, poetic intelligence, musical intelligence and, alas,
machines look very intelligent.

Not only do we change the definition of intelligence –
the project is bigger than this:

we change our human realities so that they become machine processable.

‘We think we’re making the robots in our image, but perhaps they’re making us in theirs.’ Alexa O’Brien

 

Our games become machine games,
our exchange unit, money, once coupled to goods and services and meaning, becomes a mere machine construct, created and annihilated by machines.

 

 

And, then – oh surprise! –

AI beats human in computer games.

AI beats human in predicting insurance customers.

AI beats human GO masters.

All of these victories are trivial, data centric, mere consequences of size and speed.

We have changed the playing field so that our favorite may win.
Repeat the distortion often enough and we might even believe in this new intelligence.

Meanwhile, our strongest AIs can not even go down to the corner store and buy a bread.