<div dir="ltr">On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Anders Sandberg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">
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<div>On 2013-10-27 19:50, Kelly Anderson
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<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Eugen Leitl <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org" target="_blank">eugen@leitl.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<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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Many billions times smarter than us, using which metric?<br>
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<div>Any you wish to put forward. <br>
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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" target="_blank">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, I agree that putting a number on intelligence is tricky business. Perhaps I use it in more of a metaphorical sense. However much smarter you are than a tree, there is some possible being that is that much smarter than you. That sort of thing.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is also the issue of speed. If a machine can finish the same IQ test in 100 milliseconds, and score 145, then I would say that it was smarter than me, even if the scores in the end are identical.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">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. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Of course, solving by committee is extremely poor at solving certain kinds of problems, like what to do about the US national debt. Almost any single individual would do better than the current collection.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">(But see <a href="http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2013/10/silicon_dreams.html" target="_blank">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It is clear to me that two humans are not twice as smart as one. The main benefit seems to be in keeping the smarter of the two intellectually honest, and also adding a few facts in here and there that the more intelligent doesn't have stored in his memory.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I apologize for my sloppy thinking on this matter. </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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(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" target="_blank">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>
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So, *please*: no more "a billion times smarter than us"!<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Ok. How about this. I can envision a day when the utility value of a machine will be as much greater than a human being than a human being's utility is greater than that of a cockroach?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">(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?)</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>While assigning numbers to it, it is clearly the case that some people are more beautiful and intelligent than some others. That's not to say you could line us up in rank order, unless it were to solve the precise same problem.</div>
<div><br></div><div>-Kelly</div><div> </div></div></div></div>