EA - Two contrasting models of “intelligence” and future growth by Magnus Vinding

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Two contrasting models of “intelligence” and future growth, published by Magnus Vinding on November 24, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.My primary aim in this post is to present two basic models of the development and future of “intelligence”, and to highlight the differences between these models. I believe that people’s beliefs about the future of AI and “AI takeoff scenarios” may in large part depend on which of these two simple models they favor most strongly, and hence it seems worth making these models more explicit, so that we can better evaluate and critique them.Among the two models I present, I myself happen to consider one of them significantly more plausible, and I will outline some of the reasons why I believe that.The models I present may feel painfully basic, but I think it can be helpful to visit these most basic issues, as it seems to me that much disagreement springs from there.“AI skepticism”?It might be tempting to view the discussion of the contrasting models below as a clash between the “AI priority” camp and the “AI skepticism” camp. But I think this would be inaccurate. Neither of the two models I present imply that we should be unconcerned about AI, or indeed that avoiding catastrophic AI outcomes should not be a top priority. Where the models will tend to disagree is more when it comes to what kinds of AI outcomes are most likely, and, as a consequence, how we can best address risks of bad AI outcomes. (More on this below.)Two contrasting definitions of “intelligence”Before outlining the two models of the development and future of “intelligence”, it is worth first specifying two distinct definitions of “intelligence”. These definitions are important, as the two contrasting models that I outline below see the relationship between these definitions of “intelligence” in very different ways.The two definitions of intelligence are the following:Intelligence 1: Individual cognitive abilities.Intelligence 2: The ability to achieve a wide range of goals.The first definition is arguably the common-sense definition of “intelligence”, and is often associated with constructs such as IQ and the g factor. The second definition is more abstract, and is inspired by attempts to provide a broad definition of “intelligence” (see e.g. Legg & Hutter, 2007).At a first glance, the difference between these two definitions may not be all that clear. After all, individual cognitive abilities can surely be classified as “abilities to achieve a wide range of goals”, meaning that Intelligence 1 can be seen as a subset of Intelligence 2. This seems fairly uncontroversial to say, and both of the models outlined below would agree with this claim.Where substantive disagreement begins to enter the picture is when we explore the reverse relation. Is Intelligence 2 likewise a subset of Intelligence 1? In other words, are the two notions of “intelligence” virtually identical?This is hardly the case. After all, abilities such as constructing a large building, or sending a spaceship to the moon, are not purely a product of individual cognitive abilities, even if cognitive abilities play crucial parts in such achievements.The distance between Intelligence 1 and Intelligence 2 — or rather, how small or large of a subset Intelligence 1 is within Intelligence 2 — is a key point of disagreement between the two models outlined below, as will hopefully become clear shortly.Two contrasting models of the development and future of “intelligence”Simplified models at opposite ends of a spectrumThe two models I present below are extremely simple and coarse-grained, but I still think they capture some key aspects of how people tend to diverge in their thinking about the development and future of “intelligence”.The models I present exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, wh...