I think a thread on this topic will be interesting. My own position is that AI is intelligent, and that’s for a very simple reason: it can do things that require intelligence. That sounds circular, and in one sense it is. In another sense it isn’t. It’s a way of saying that we don’t have to examine the internal workings of a system to decide that it’s intelligent. Behavior alone is sufficient to make that determination. Intelligence is as intelligence does.
You might ask how I can judge intelligence in a system if I haven’t defined what intelligence actually is. My answer is that we already judge intelligence in humans and animals without a precise definition, so why should it be any different for machines? There are lots of concepts for which we don’t have precise definitions, yet we’re able to discuss them coherently. They’re the “I know it when I see it” concepts. I regard intelligence as one of those. The boundaries might be fuzzy, but we’re able to confidently say that some activities require intelligence (inventing the calculus) and others don’t (breathing).
I know that some readers will disagree with my functionalist view of intelligence, and that’s good. It should make for an interesting discussion.
If one measure of intelligence is understanding the net effect on society of following the rules, of obeying the laws, of honesty and compassion, the correlation between these and Trump administration ivy league degrees can only be negative.
Flint:
I think they understand the effect on society. They just don’t care. It’s a moral failure, not a cognitive one.
He constantly surprises himself as super genius. And he says he has plenty of smart people around him – where smart means either a rich suckup or a foreign dictator. Unfortunately he has more than the minimal critical mass of support in whatever he does.
Trump’s rule has sufficiently redefined American social norms by now. It is most damning that this could happen without changing the constitution. Hitler had to pass Ermächtigungsgesetz to shut down the parliament (and at first go through another round of elections to soften it up). In USA the Congress has shut up of its own free will to please Trump.
Erik:
Rules of morality are norms, and in any case the criteria for ASPD are replete with moral judgments.
You’re misrepresenting the criterion. It doesn’t say “failure to conform to social norms”. It says
And the rest of the criteria (for both ASPD and NPD) are full of moral phrasing. Examples: “interpersonally exploitative”, “lacks empathy”, “violation of the rights of others”, “repeated lying”, “conning others for personal profit or pleasure”, and so on. Those are moral judgments.