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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2013-10-27 19:50, Kelly Anderson
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPy8RwZ70-X=d45W+gtEeVLWaatd5QV=+u7L6Cf2deSUW7_6WA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Eugen Leitl <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org" target="_blank">eugen@leitl.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span
style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">> that point puts
computers at many billions of times smarter than us in a</span><br>
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<br>
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Many billions times smarter than us, using which metric?<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
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<div>Any you wish to put forward. <br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
This has on and off been the matter of discussion at the office. "A
hundred times smarter than X" - what kind of scale is implied?
Looking at <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement</a>
one can see that statements like this requires the measured thing to
behave according to a ratio scale - you can meaningfully multiply
and divide. <br>
<br>
But this is not true for IQ scales: while indicating a real number
that can certainly be multiplied, there is no inherent meaning of
double IQ-intelligence beyond "can get a higher score on the same
test that places the person in a twice as high IQ bracket". It is
not twice as many correct answers, and it is not being part of a
half as large population fraction. <br>
<br>
Elo scales does something similar: if you score X and I score 2X,
the probability of you winning against me is 1/(1+10^(X/400)) - a
bit more well defined, but still not obvious in any way. One can
imagine chains of ever greater players reaching up from our human
level to some mind playing at score 5744, but this might only make
sense in a space where ranking is nicely one-dimensional - there is
also an assumption that we are dealing with a scalar scale. <br>
<br>
In the game of real world statesmanship it is not clear that Hitler,
Gandhi or Shǐ Huángdì played for maximizing the same kind of score.
Maybe one was "twice as good" at military conquest as another one,
but that does not imply much about the score on empire building or
moral rectitude. While one can sum together ratio and interval
scales, the result is not necessarily meaningful (consider human
development indices - an ordinal "higher is better" is likely the
only possible conclusion one can draw from them, but it is not clear
that the equal country is better off than the country with great
education). <br>
<br>
For superintelligence I am willing to assume one could construct
something like an Elo scale by comparing different minds gaming
against each other and/or nature across a wide set of problems. I
also think for many kinds of minds general problem solving is able
to generalize to new kinds of challenges, creating enough
correlation between the ability to solve them that it makes sense of
speaking of one score. (But see <a
href="http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/10/silicon_dreams.html">http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/10/silicon_dreams.html</a>
- it might be that talking about "twice as smart as humans" would
require using humanity as a whole as a test subject, not just a
representative human)<br>
<br>
In short, while it might be possible to rank intelligences roughly
along some kind of scale linked to their intelligence, it looks like
saying "twice as smart" doesn't convey much useful information. One
would at the very least need to get into the tedious explanation of
what kind of test it is. It might be better to say *what* the
superminds are supposed to be able to do, and then discuss how one
reaches that conclusion. <br>
<br>
(Example: I can imagine and argue for minds that solve standard IQ
tests at the same accuracy as humans a million times faster, for
example fast brain emulations. Incidentally, given <a
href="http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/E9B43B7C-E94C-44CF-89D0-B59BABB0147C/0/TimedUntimed.pdf">http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/E9B43B7C-E94C-44CF-89D0-B59BABB0147C/0/TimedUntimed.pdf</a>
their performance would likely not be super-good score-wise thanks
to extra time. However, given past group problem solving papers it
is likely that running a million emulations in parallel and then
using agreed to be best answers could improve scores a lot, up to 55
IQ points.)<br>
<br>
So, *please*: no more "a billion times smarter than us"!<br>
<br>
<br>
(Could a beauty a million times more beautiful than Helen of Troy
launch a billion ships? Is the admiral's wife who launches one ship
a thousandth of Helen?)<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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