AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[zompist]

On the first half: indeed there are multiple forms of intelligence. (Earlier in the thread I gave examples from my own experience!) At the same time, when we say that ‘so-and-so is smarter than me’, it’s pretty clear what is meant. There definitely seems to be some factor, primarily relating to skills in abstract manipulation and language, which corresponds to the common notion of ‘intelligence’. And it seems clear that that factor affects the abilities of people to do things. I cannot do mathematics like, say, Terry Tao; equally, other people have told me they can’t do the work I do.

All this is quite compatible with intelligence being a bundle of miscellaneous abilities.

An analogy might be whether or not a country is "advanced" or "developing". Surely there's no notion that this is a single factor. There's a bunch of stuff involved: education levels, health levels, emancipation of women, knowledge of advanced tech, manufacturing base, corruption levels, competent government, ability to start businesses easily, lax bankruptcy laws, sufficient investment funds, access to markets, road/railroad/port readiness, a history of prior entrepreneurship, a balance of free trade and protectionism, wage level, not being too much in thrall to superpowers. Many of the factors co-occur in Europe/US/Japan, but it's easy to see that (say) the number of college graduates is not the same as the number of railroads. You can most easily see problems when one factor is missing, or for that matter overdeveloped.

I think it's easier to see that "intelligence" is multifaceted if you look at psychological disorders or atypicalities. There are people with near-perfect memory, others whose short-term memory is shot. There are people with extraordinary math ability who are highly disabled in other areas. On a more quotidian level there are people who are great with computer languages or chess but can't write a letter to save their lives, or people who are experts on literature and language who are baffled by technology. Some people can visualize 3-D objects in their minds and manipulate them like a CAD program... I wish I had that one myself. People with damage to Broca's or Wernicke's area have problems with language but can handle complex physical tasks— it would be bold and dismissive to call them "unintelligent."

It's true that we can kind of mush all this together as an informal concept of intelligence. But you can't get rid of the mushiness, and attempts to reduce the mushiness to a number are self-delusions.

Another example might be "beauty". People may kind-of-concur on what makes someone beautiful— but it would be absurd to come up with a "beauty quotient" or rank everyone 1 to 8 billion. People don't agree that closely, and there's a huge cultural component. As there is for intelligence: the skills that impress a 21st century American or Australian are not the exact same set as would have impressed a 19th century one, or Homer, or a hunter-gatherer.

[zompist]

(It's easy to find estimates for the number of parameters in LLMs, hard to find estimates for the number of nodes; but it'll be far smaller. The number of neurons in the human brain, BTW, is 100 billion. Funny how whenever you look at biological systems, you underestimate them by several orders of magnitude.)

But most of those are found in the cerebellum. The cerebrum, which does all the actual thinking, only has around fifteen billion.

You are out of date. Here's an interesting story of a man with no cerebellum. tl;dr: He is functional, but disabled in many ways, including thinking and emotional tasks.

First, [scientists] showed that [the cerebellum] has connections to brain areas that perform higher functions, like using language, reading maps and planning. Then, a few years ago, researchers began to do functional MRI studies that suggested that the cerebellum was actively involved in these tasks.

"The big surprise from functional imaging was that when you do these language tasks and spatial tasks and thinking tasks, lo and behold the cerebellum lit up," Schmahmann says.

[Raphael]

All this is quite compatible with intelligence being a bundle of miscellaneous abilities.

An analogy might be whether or not a country is "advanced" or "developing". Surely there's no notion that this is a single factor. There's a bunch of stuff involved: education levels, health levels, emancipation of women, knowledge of advanced tech, manufacturing base, corruption levels, competent government, ability to start businesses easily, lax bankruptcy laws, sufficient investment funds, access to markets, road/railroad/port readiness, a history of prior entrepreneurship, a balance of free trade and protectionism, wage level, not being too much in thrall to superpowers. Many of the factors co-occur in Europe/US/Japan, but it's easy to see that (say) the number of college graduates is not the same as the number of railroads. You can most easily see problems when one factor is missing, or for that matter overdeveloped.

I think it's easier to see that "intelligence" is multifaceted if you look at psychological disorders or atypicalities. There are people with near-perfect memory, others whose short-term memory is shot. There are people with extraordinary math ability who are highly disabled in other areas. On a more quotidian level there are people who are great with computer languages or chess but can't write a letter to save their lives, or people who are experts on literature and language who are baffled by technology. Some people can visualize 3-D objects in their minds and manipulate them like a CAD program... I wish I had that one myself. People with damage to Broca's or Wernicke's area have problems with language but can handle complex physical tasks— it would be bold and dismissive to call them "unintelligent."

It's true that we can kind of mush all this together as an informal concept of intelligence. But you can't get rid of the mushiness, and attempts to reduce the mushiness to a number are self-delusions.

Another example might be "beauty". People may kind-of-concur on what makes someone beautiful— but it would be absurd to come up with a "beauty quotient" or rank everyone 1 to 8 billion. People don't agree that closely, and there's a huge cultural component. As there is for intelligence: the skills that impress a 21st century American or Australian are not the exact same set as would have impressed a 19th century one, or Homer, or a hunter-gatherer.

Another analogy might be basic physical fitness. A marathon runner, a short-distance runner, and a boxer are all physically fit, but in different ways.

[malloc]

You are out of date. Here's an interesting story of a man with no cerebellum. tl;dr: He is functional, but disabled in many ways, including thinking and emotional tasks.

Sure but the story also says that "the cerebellum really has just one job: It takes clumsy actions or functions and makes them more refined" and "it doesn't make things. It makes things better". The cerebrum does all the actual thinking and feeling while the cerebellum refines rough drafts of thought and feeling. Despite having eighty percent of the neurons in the brain, it certainly isn't conducting eighty percent of cognition by any means.

[bradrn]

Imagining a super intelligent AGI, what could it do that humans couldn't?

It is impossible to imagine what it’s like to be an AGI. This is a very general point, which I think I’ve made before: it’s impossible to imagine what it’s like to be of a higher intelligence than you are already, because that would be tantamount to you yourself having that amount of intelligence. (That Vinge quote I gave earlier says basically the same thing.)

On the other hand, perhaps it may be possible to imagine what a superintelligence would be able to do, ‘from the outside’. But a lot of people have tried, and responses range from ‘not much at all’ to ‘the end of humanity’. Personally, I’m convinced only that a superintelligence would be completely unpredictable by humans such as us. (This is basically the same opinion Vinge ended up with, I believe.)

It's true that we can kind of mush all this together as an informal concept of intelligence. But you can't get rid of the mushiness, and attempts to reduce the mushiness to a number are self-delusions.

Precisely my point!

An analogy might be whether or not a country is "advanced" or "developing". […] Another example might be "beauty".

Ah, these two are good examples, thanks!

I think it's easier to see that "intelligence" is multifaceted if you look at psychological disorders or atypicalities.

As mentioned in my post I gave examples of this from my own experience, though of course my case is not as extreme as those you mention.