subject: The Conundrum of Intelligent Machines 3 [print this page] Author: Centijo Author: Centijo
These questions call for a clarification of what intelligence means, thereby allowing for criteria as a yardstick to measure by. A query of dictionary meanings equates to intelligent entities as having an affinity for knowledge, to understand it and to solve problems via cognition. This implies autonomy, as something must have the ability to store information (affinity for knowledge, to be used in learning) and to overcome obstacles in an unpredictable environment (solving problems via cognition). Understanding is a special aspect as will be seen. Alan Turing was thinking the same thing circa 1950's, having developed his "Turing Test": an Intelligence Quotient test (IQ test), but for computers. Turing thought that, if his computer could fool car dvd players contestant into thinking it was a human - a question and answer game - then intelligent it was. An oversimplification, however. Comparatively, current IQ tests for humans that are valid intelligence gauges innervate a set of "cognitive abilities," like analytical reasoning, spatial awareness, verbal ability, etc. Psychometricians have successfully measured over seventy of these abilities. Robert Sternberg (IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University) abridged this number to three: analytic, creative and practical. These abilities are postulated as being parts of inter-correlated systems that make up intelligence. Of course, they are metaphors that hover over their respective brain regions. Together, they account for a wide range of car dvd, like mathematical reasoning, finding solutions to new problems, creative writing, making quick decisions with long-lasting future implications, etc. They dictate the essence of intelligent thought. The Turing test is at most a test of a program in a significantly compartmentalized way. In consideration of these cognitive abilities as the driving force for human thought, adding the necessary need of a physical structure like a brain or ganglion to process the information, results in intelligence as, contestably, "A physical thing that has the car dvd player to learn and understand knowledge by exercising a set of cognitive abilities which allows knowledge to be gained."About the Author:
