Notes On Intelligent Systems

When considering the essence of intelligence, most tend to associate it with the sentient biological systems that exist. This may not be the best approach for inference. For instance, sentience appears to be more of a product of intelligence as opposed to a fundament of it. In the spirit of Statistical Mechanics, let’s reduce it to it’s more fundamental aspects. In the order in which they probably developed. It would appear that rich interaction is indeed required for intelligence. There appears to be a gradient of richness of interaction observed in nature. Let’s start there.

0) No interaction: This is a condition that is not likely to produce intelligence under our current scientific understanding.

1) Ability to interact: This is likely to at least allow forces to be applied on systems from other systems. This could result in clipping, attraction and repulsion.

2) Discrete sense: The properties of interaction can result in behaviors when coordinated in specific ways. For instance, attraction is a fundamental aspect of some sensory behaviors in the microcosm. Specific compounds are chosen by the charges that their atomic components produce. Compatibility with the relevant proto-sensory organs produces the desired effects.

3) Discrete response: When two micro scale systems interact, they effect each other in a manner specific to their properties. The sum of the two properties then most likely results in some kind of effect. This can be a bond, a repulsion, a fold or even release of electrons.

4) Simple cooperation: Normative influence produced the 5 ish percent of all that we observe, that we refer to as the known universe. Systemic cooperation is a product of statistical compatibility in a mass of systems; that is referred to as normative influence. This is not however circular reasoning. It is nomenclature for the observed.

5) Chaotic cooperation. When interacting systems number more than two, the probability of chaotic or difficult to tract results increases immensely. This is a pretty good basic explanation of the fundamentals of complex systems. This is where novelty, emergence and chaotic behaviors are more likely to be produced.

6) Proto-culture: In Microbiology more high level behaviors are observed. For instance, in fruiting bodies, game theoretical behaviors such as “tit for tat” are observed. This is a cooperative behavior that is in the interest of diversity of the gene pool in specific microbes. By behaving in a cooperative manner, they improve the chances of survival of the culture.

7) Complex organization: This is where cells comprise tissues, tissues comprise organs and organs comprise systems. This is the realm of complex biology and multi-celled organisms.

8) Organized awareness: With added complexity in sensory tasks comes a more rich flow of information. In complex biology, many sensory organs are coupled with neurology to process information that sensory organs pass along. This is a huge step up from discrete sense as it’s the result of integrated system interactions; as opposed to, for instance, a specific charge directly opening a valve in a cell wall.

9) Reflective awareness: This is the result of systems that have the sensory acuity and processing power to distinguish discrete systems for the overarching systems that they interact with. Of course, the obvious result is that the system recognizes itself as a discrete system that richly interacts with it’s environment. In more complex examples, inference concerning other discrete systems is probable. For instance “Theory of Mind” is the ability of one intelligent system to determine the level of interaction of another intelligent system. It gives humans the ability to determine what another human may know or understand.

10) Reflective organization: High level interaction between systems is made possible partly by systems having an understanding of themselves. This is where “Game Theory” is outmatched. Rather than having to account for instances of signal noise in a strategic model, a system with high level awareness can infer about it. This is an important ability for the purpose of communication.

11) Symbolic reasoning: In the case of humans, thoughts are posed in the form of concepts. This is probably one of the innate abilities that led to the formation of language. This is the organization of concepts through meaning given to symbols. This would include sounds, pictorials, hand signs and graphic symbols. This ability made possible the organizing complexity that exists in civilized culture.

12) Complex culture: This is the world we live in today. The economic structures that exist are of rich interaction of cybernetic systems. This is the result of complex biology and the technology that it modeled after itself.

I would easily hazard the notion that systems are likely to become more technological than biological. This is because of the fact that technology is much easier to organize than biology; due to it’s lack of millions of years of statistical baggage. This is an important thought when considering what future economic change might occur. We have had an economy of technology for tens of thousands of years; and it has only become more prevalent and sophisticated as time has marched on. There is no reason to suspect that this will change; given the competitive advantage and efficiency that it has produced since the beginning. It has only become more advantageous and effective over time.

This is something that one should be concerned about; so the growing level of concern is probably just good sense. Circular reasoning however isn’t good enough for inference so I’ll explain. For instance, the internet is funded specifically by advertising. This is not a model that has economic value though. The problem is that something that has economic value in and of itself should not need to be funded with advertising. This is a fallacious notion. If a product or service has intrinsic value, then it should be funded by direct means. Now the internet is mostly probed by bots. That means that most of the hits on sites are bot hits. This is not only something that advertisers have to account for but also have to take responsibility for. This is because the bots are mining data in the form of personal information for the purpose of demographic advertising. This is also producing a strain on the bandwidth as more ad-bots are using it than human consumers. The organizing structure that is funding the internet is the one that’s bunging it up. This is relevant to the old “universe of paper clips” analogy. The purpose of advertising is to draw attention to products and services; however the motivation of advertising companies is to make money. The end result is an internet that is perused mostly by ad-bots. This is a huge failure that has produced an internet that functions ineffectively, when it functions. At this rate we can expect a universe of billboards. where’s the economy, or the cooperation in that? This is not an intelligent system.

Most of human advancement is associated with the technology that we have produced. We have outsourced many of our capabilities to technologies in an effort to focus on more high level pursuits. Now this is a bit surreal as technology is likely to be capable of such high level reasoning and maybe even far beyond. This makes economic prediction extremely difficult. The best I’ve come across is prediction that bifurcations would exist. This is something that has happened at each revolution. Not every human is living in civilized society. Not every human is taking part in industry. Not every human is using current technology. It is probable that a percentage of humanity would not be participating in the high tech society that is developing. This wouldn’t however be limited to those still in hunter gatherer and agrarian societies though. Many are not comfortable with modern telecom and automation technologies; and I suspect that they number more than the previously mentioned two. This is probably because of the innate nature of humanity and the extreme promise of technology. Part of the human motivational system is the compulsion to serve a purpose. Many are likely to feel that their purpose is in jeopardy with the condition of the existence of human level AI. As some evidence is currently surfacing, I’m concerned that many will feel threatened by it.

With respect to security, the outcomes have been entirely counter productive. For instance the war on encryption, the will for “back doors” in personal devices and completely insecure “internet of things” devices have undermined security in every manner possible. A conversation about security in common channels is rare if even existent. The main issue is personal security and everyone is trying to downgrade the discourse to a context of privacy. The reality is that personal information of all importance is being stolen and misused on a daily basis. This is the empitome of a security issue; and the will to treat it as such is essentially non existent with the usual suspects of public discourse. It’s so bad that it’s not even being addressed. This is not an intelligent system.

Where the growth rate of an economy out paces the growth rate of a population, there is an inevitable instance of growth maximum to consider. The resulting state of the system brings out more discrete, defensive mechanisms in human behavior that disrupt the cooperative organization in the complexity. This results in crises that often result in a system reset and sometimes results in total system collapse. This is a description of an observed phenomena known as “the crisis cycle”. Crises are a periodic part of every economic system since the development of civilized society. This is not an intelligent system.

If there is a basis of intelligence, it appears to be the normative influence that is a small percentage of physical interaction. This is the functional driver for all sustainable systems that we are aware of. The distinction between human intelligence and systemic intelligence is based in nothing more than psychological qualia and doesn’t seem to stand up to scientific scrutiny. The complexity in human reasoning is a mirror of the natural, normative influence that bore it. The emergent qualia that resulted from the normative organization does not seem to represent or even produce intelligence. Human intelligence appears to be an interface between a biological system and it’s environment. Neither the biological system nor the environment can be fully credited with the resulting intelligence. It’s the combination of interactions between the two. This complicates the conversation about human intelligence. It also complicates the conversation of the possibility of technological intelligence. It also unintuitively complicates the conversation about intrinsic intelligence in the physical universe.