In this post I'd like to present a slightly different take on AI and expose one dimension of Intelligence which we hardly explore with mainstream efforts. In order to do that, I'll use a metaphor, which should hopefully make things clear. As with every analogy, this one is also bound to be imperfect, but should be sufficient to get certain idea across.

The metaphor

The way I see progress in artificial intelligence (AI) could be summarized with the following (visual) metaphor:

Imagine that elevation symbolizes ability to accomplish certain level of performance in a given task, and each horizontal position (latitude/longitude) represents a task. Human intelligence is like a mountain, tall and rather flat, just like one of those buttes in Monument Valley. Let's call this mountain "Mt. Intelligence". A lot of horizontal space is covered by the hill (representing the vast amount of tasks that can be accomplished), less intelligent animals can be represented by lower hills covering different areas of task space.

In this setting our efforts in AI resemble building towers. They are very narrow and shaky, but by strapping together a bunch of cables and duct tape we can often reach elevation higher than the "human … Read more...