The Technium: Without a theory of intelligence
Kevin Kelly argues on The Technium that, beyond doing new things, AI will be an instrument for studying minds, like the microscope, the telescope or the cyclotron, and that it will give us the theory of intelligence we lack: despite the strides made in producing AI, Kelly writes, "we have no theory of intelligence". Kelly likens the moment to steam engines working before anyone had a theory of heat, and says such a theory could tell us how far today's models are from what is physically possible, help with alignment and psychiatry, and separate intelligence from consciousness. Kelly does not offer the theory, and allows that there may be no general one; the essay points to a small group of scientists, among them the UC Berkeley neuroscientist Jacob Yates, trying to found such a science.
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