Intelligence as an Emergent Phenomenon

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Intelligence as an Emergent Phenomenon

• J Duncan

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Daniel Dennetts Kinds of Minds

• Intelligence, from the lowest forms to the
  highest is an emergent phenomena
• Connectionism and distributed information storage
  is the means by which this is realized
• Humans are separated only from other animals by
  use of language and our ability to hypothesize
  about identity

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Origins

• Earliest replicators - Macromolecules
• Perform random walks for needs
• Use chemical lock and key mechanisms
• Reasons but no reason formulators, or reason
  representers, or even reason appreciators

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The Need-to-Know Principle

• Enforced by the cost of design in nature
• The cheapest, least intensively designed system
  will be discovered first by Mother Nature, and
  myopically selected.
• Emergent behavior is much cheaper than directed,
  efficient design

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Problems and Benefits

• Problems
• Not necessarily the best or smallest design
• Legacy code
• Unexpected benefits
• Recycling code
• Random mutations of unused material

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Plants and Bias

• Respond phenotypically to stimuli on evolutionary
  timescale
• timescale chauvinism / spatial bias - size
• What is the actual role of speed in the
  phenomenon of the mind?
• Mind barrier to be crossed?

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Mind Speed Requirements?

• Relative speed
• Minimum for usefulness due to environment
• Within an ecosystem, fast wins over slow
• Emergent properties might also manifest at some
  speed but not below

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Sentience vs. Sensitivity

• mere intentional systems vs. genuine minds
• Sentience lowest grade of consciousness
• Some missing factor?
• Looking for x

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Processing

• Plants distributed processing
• Animals and plants operations distinct of
  central processing
• Cellular level - defenses
• Biochemical -gt electric impulse nervous system
• Separation of function from composition

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Functionalism

• Multiple realizations
• Artificial minds should be constructible if we
  can isolate what minds do
• Process information
• Disagreement over media

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Evolution of Transduction

• Fly by wire
• Efficient information transmission vs. force
  transmission
• Feedback helps
• Time lags
• Isolate the control system mind?

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Double Tansduction

• Myth of Double Tansduction percepts -gt
  Information (neural signals) -gt thought
  (Decartes)
• since peripheral activity was mere sensitivity,
  there had to be some more central place where the
  sentience was created.
• Artificial Intelligence

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Connectionism

• The idea that the network itself- by virtue of
  its intricate structure could assume the role of
  the inner Boss and thus harbor consciousness,
  seems preposterous. Initially
• Information processing Information storage
  Physical structure of the network

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Bodily Information

• Evolution embodies information in every part of
  every organism
• Physical information - world
• Not necessarily found in the brain
• Distributed storage of physical properties
• This only takes you so far short range
  intentionality

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Microagents

• Evolution from proximal systems to distal
  systems
• Organisms composed of microagents, organized
  into dozens or hundreds or thousands of
  subsystems. Each of these tiny agents can be
  conceived of as an utterly minimal intentional
  system
• Nodes in a connectionist network cells and
  groups of cells connected in networks

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Tower of Generate-and-Test

• Darwinian Creatures (field testing)
• Skinnerian Creatures (reinforcement learning,
  NNs) simple invertebrates?
• Popperian Creatures (preselection of actions,
  inner model)
• Gregorian Creatures (tool users and tool
  refiners)

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Design pitfalls

• Top-down and bottom-up design in Cognitive
  Science
• Working up we tend to be unimpressed
• Working down we subtract particularly human
  features of our experience as inessential.
• We may tend to overlookthe possibility that we
  are subtracting, on one path, the very thing we
  are seeking on the other.

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No Distinction?

• A conservative hypothesis Sentience comes in
  every imaginable grade or intensity, from the
  simplest and most robotic, to the most
  exquisitely sensitive, hyper-reactive human.
• Tool use
• Among the preeminent tools, Gregory reminds us,
  are what he calls mind tools words

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As-if Decision Making

• Systems of perception non-Boolean circuits
• Braitenbergs vehicles
• By installing dozens or hundreds or thousands of
  such circuits in a single organism, elaborate
  life-protecting activities can be reliably
  controlled, all without anything happening inside
  the organism that looks like thinking specific
  thoughts. There is plenty of as if decision
  making

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What is unique about humans?

• The capacity we have to frame, and even under
  most circumstances test, hypotheses about
  identity
• it takes a Gregorian creature who has language
  among its mind tools. But in order to use
  language, we have to be specially equipped with
  the talents that permit us to extract these mind
  tools from the social environment in which they
  reside.

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Discussion