AI: Does general intelligence even exist?

[jasong]

I've been thinking about one of the holy grails of the artificial intelligence field, an algorithm that can handle anything reasonably well.

One of the main things people look at when trying to come up with these new technologies is the human brain, it supposed to be the model to go by, and maybe to copy.

So think about how general intelligence happens in the brain. Different parts of the brain do different things, and they somehow cooperate to solve a problem. The thing is, I don't think we've ever found any brain cells groups that fall under the category of general intelligence. It seems more that all the cells have one or more specialties they're associated with, and the cooperation of all the groups creates what we call general intelligence.

So maybe the algorithm for general intelligence is to simply combine the specialized algorithms really well.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by jasong

I've been thinking about one of the holy grails of the artificial intelligence field, an algorithm that can handle anything reasonably well.

One of the main things people look at when trying to come up with these new technologies is the human brain, it supposed to be the model to go by, and maybe to copy.

So think about how general intelligence happens in the brain. Different parts of the brain do different things, and they somehow cooperate to solve a problem. The thing is, I don't think we've ever found any brain cells groups that fall under the category of general intelligence. It seems more that all the cells have one or more specialties they're associated with, and the cooperation of all the groups creates what we call general intelligence.

So maybe the algorithm for general intelligence is to simply combine the specialized algorithms really well.

I suspect you are almost certainly correct. As I see it, intelligence is a collective property of a system.

For evidence to support my view, consider a honey bee hive or a termite colony. The individual insects aren't particularly smart. The colony as a whole shows quite sophisticated behaviour in response to external stimuli. I've heard it said that a bee hive is about as intelligent as a sheep or horse.