Reflections on Intelligence

by Magnus Vinding

A lot of people are talking about “superintelligent AI” these days. But what are they talking about? Indeed, what is “intelligence” in the first place? This question is often left unanswered in discussions about the peril and promise of artificial intelligence. Magnus Vinding argues that greater clarity about the meaning and nature of "intelligence" is needed if we are to think clearly about the future of AI.

40 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 3, 2016

About the author

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022), and Essays on UFOs and Related Conjectures (2024).

His next book will be Compassionate Purpose: Personal Inspiration for a Better World.

Reviews

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

2018.10.24–2018.10.24

Contents

Vinding M (2016) Reflections on Intelligence

Introduction

1. What is Intelligence?
• Origin and Common Use of the Term
• A Clear Definition of a Relevant Ability

2. Goal Achieving – Its Distributed and Many-Faceted Nature
• The Relationship Between Individual and Collective Goal Achieving Ability

3. When Machines Improve Machines
• “Intelligence Though!” – A Bad Argument
• The Problems with Magic Sauce Theory

4. Consciousness – Orthogonal or Crucial?

5. A Brief Note on Goals

6. The Unpredictability of the Future of “Intelligence”

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one definitely provides reason to recalibrate one's risk assessment of the issues surrounding AI and AI alignment, largely by highlighting just how nebulous the concept of 'intelligence' tends to be in many of the more typical claims in this area. Will definitely need to come back to this one after looking again at Bostrom's work and others, and see to what extent I am indeed prioritizing the issue with the level of importance it deserves (or doesn't). Or at the very least, ensuring I have a more refined idea of what 'the problem' entails.