Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsh!mbb
From: mbb@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (martin.b.brilliant)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Adaptive vs. intelligent (was Re: "Intelligence")
Message-ID: <1430@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 89 15:41:38 GMT
References: <13493@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 62

From article <13493@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU>, by mv10801@msi-s6 (Jonathan Marshall [Learning Center]):
> Intelligence is not just the ability to learn or adapt.  I would like
> to claim that intelligent organisms all share 3 fundamental properties:
> 	1. they can adapt (or learn),
> 	2. they self-organize, and
> 	3. they have initiative.

I would like at this point to hold fast to what I think is progress,
namely, a general agreement that "intelligent" systems form a subset of
"adaptive" systems.  That is, "adaptive" is a necessary, but not
sufficient, condition for "intelligent."

> A programmable calculator can learn, but it probably doesn't
> self-organize, and it doesn't have initiative -- so we wouldn't call
> it intelligent.....

I have always had trouble with the use of the word "learn" in referring
to programmable calculators.  A calculator in "learn" mode does not
learn, in the sense that a rat in one of B. F. Skinner's mazes is
learning.  It is only being programmed.  And I think Jonathan Marshall
has shown why.  I think "initiative" is the key.  Skinner's rats learn
by trial and experience, which presupposes initiative, but the
calculator does not have initiative.

But I don't know exactly what "self-organize" means.  May I try to
guess by filling in blanks?  I suggested earlier that an intelligent
system is different from a merely adaptive one in that it never stops
learning.  What I meant was that after it has learned all there is to
know at a certain level or organization of knowlege, it asks questions
at a higher level and proceeds to answer them.  Even if it does not
overtly ask questions, it builds ever higher levels of generalization
in its knowledge base.  That is something a power-seeking robot
(electric, not political, power) does not do.  Is that what
self-organizing means?

Of course, all these terms are hard to define.  Initiative is just
another word for free will, which has been the subject of endless
discussion here.  Even "adaptive" is going to be hard to define.
But we can agree that if we knew the definitions, the words would
have the following relationship:

If a system is intelligent, it must be adaptive and self-organizing and
have free will.  And if it is adaptive and self-organizing and has free
will, we would probably call it intelligent.

Now let's try this out on the evolution system, Darwin's old protocol
of variation and natural selection.   Variation gives it initiative.
Natural selection makes it adaptive.  And I would venture to suggest
that the leap from single cells to multicelled organisms, as well as
the leap in the other direction from simple cells to eukaryote
cells-within-cells, demonstrate self-organization, in the sense of
building generalization upon generalization.  So evolution might be an
intelligent system.  But though it has a knowledge base, it doesn't use
it to model its environment, which is an additional criterion that Mark
Plutowski suggested.  So maybe only people are intelligent, after all.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201) 949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	att!hounx!marty1 or marty1@hounx.ATT.COM

Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer
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