Intelligence or intellect?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, philosophy, intelligence, artificial intelligence, history

Short Definitions:

Intelligence – the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

Intellect – the faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively

The first tension that presents itself in Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains, by Catherine Malabou, is that between the use of "intelligence" where most philosophers would have preferred "intellect", in discussions of reasoning ability and its measurement, roughly a century ago. I suspect that the definitions she would use for these terms differ from those shown above. Personally, I care little which term is used.

It took me a good while to get used to the language of the book. It was translated from French by Carolyn Shread. I was not always sure if this or that infelicity of English usage was because of the original French idiom, or from word choices made by the translator, choices I might have made differently. I suspect the former; philosophers, particularly European philosophers, think in ways quite foreign to us hoi polloi. Such is the legacy of a century of Linguistic Analysis (both Ideal and Colloquial) and their sister, Logical Positivism: too much musing on "the meaning of meaning". Once I had my mind in gear, I found the book quite engaging.

The core of the book, explaining the title, surrounds three "metamorphoses" of "intelligence." I would perhaps have used either "manifestation" or even "aspect" rather than "metamorphosis". The three are, in brief:

1. The view of Intelligence as a genetic endowment of learning and reasoning ability, that can be measured. It is what IQ tests purported to measure, and in the literature is called both IQ and g, g being the "general factor" as opposed to a seven (later eight) factor model promoted by Howard Gardner. "Mechanical brains" based on digital computers were the early attempts to simulate mental activity in mechanisms.
2. The more nuanced understanding of epigenetic effects, both those which affect DNA expression and those which affect the "wiring" of neurons and synapses. Recent developments of "artificial neurons" such as the "neuro-synaptic processor" or TrueNorth chip (see Cassidy et al, 2016) make significant advances over traditional digital processing.
3. Future developments are expected to result from "removal of the rigid frontiers between nature and artifice." In other words, the "power of automatism" is expected to yield a constructed system that is a brain in every meaningful sense of the term.

The TrueNorth chip, with upwards of 5 billion transistors, simulating the action of a million neurons connected by 250 million synapses, is intended to functionally simulate 250 cortical columns, of which the neocortex of a human brain has about four million. This is based on measurements made since 2009 that the neocortex contains 16 billion neurons, while the cerebellar cortex (which runs the automatic systems of the body) contains about 80 billion neurons. Clearly, the cerebellar neurons are much more locally connected; much of the greater mass and size of the neocortex results from the great number of longer-distance connections via larger-diameter axons.

Assuming that the constructed neurons in the TrueNorth chip can indeed replicate the full complexity of biological neurons, the construction of a full brain simulation would require 16,000 chips for its neocortex, quite a nest of wiring for the "white matter" that ties the neocortex together, and 80,000 chips for its cerebellum…connecting the cortex to what kind of body, I can't imagine just now. So let's look only at the 16,000 neocortical chips. According to the 2016 article, each chip consumes a mere 65 mw. Times 16,000, that comes to just over a kilowatt (1,040 watts). Not bad. That compares well with a computer system reported upon in a short article in Scientific American a few years ago, which was thought to have capabilities similar to a human brain, and required a 9,000,000 watt power plant.

I suppose we can at least estimate that something similar to Moore's Law applies to these systems, with a doubling of efficiency every two years. Your brain and mine each consume about 15 watts of chemical energy (transformed partly to electrical signals). The neocortex requires a third of this, about 5 watts. 1,040/5 = 208, which comes to 7.7 powers of two (doublings). Perhaps the contention of Ms Malabou is correct, and automatism will prevail. Will it do so in the span of 15.4 years, beginning in 2016? That would be some time in the middle of 2031. Maybe I'll find out, because I'll be 84 that year.

All this I push aside in favor of another thought, one not found in Morphing Intelligence: Of what use is a perfect simulation of the human brain? I am reminded of a story by Isaac Asimov, probably found in his collection The Rest of the Robots. Using science as it was known in about 1960, he describes the endeavors of researchers at U.S. Robotics to make a robot "more and more perfect", as directed by the company president. One day the researchers bring him a robot that he cannot distinguish from a "natural" man. Shortly after this, an alien spaceship lands, and in due time, a delegation visits U.S. Robotics. They are shown the new "perfect human" robot. The company president gushes about the huge amount of research and cost required to develop it. An alien responds, "So, what's the point?"

There is indeed a point. Once we understand brain activity and function sufficiently well that we can simulate it perfectly, we have the basis for producing a true AI that is equal to our NI (Natural Intelligence) in power, but different, in ways we can determine. We can produce variations on a theme, perhaps developing new ways of thinking, a mechanism (or a bunch of them) from which we can learn new ways of perceiving and learning and interacting with the universe. Now, that is interesting!

A wide-ranging writer

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sports writing, essays, memoirs

This was a wild card selection for me, found in the 080 section of the library, classified as "General Collections." That's what happens when a librarian is confronted with a book that is in two clearly distinct sections, but must apply one number. The latter 60% of The Patch by John McPhee is indeed about as general as can be, but the first 40% really needs to be cataloged 790, "Sports, Games & Entertainment", as it consists of essays scattered across that category. Considering McPhee's wide-ranging interests, with a few million words in print over his career of fifty-plus years, I suspect a similar amount of material could be gathered for any of several subjects.

Here is my high accolade: Although I pay nearly no attention to sports, I greatly enjoyed reading his perspectives on fishing, football, basketball, golf, baseball, tennis, lacrosse, and the people (particularly coaches) surrounding them. None of it made me want to take up this or that sporting activity, but then, there wasn't much on walking or hiking, at which I excel...and I excel at nothing else, sporting-wise!

He titled the second section of his book "An Album Quilt". It consists of excerpts from fifty or so pieces of his writing over all his years riding a typewriter. It opens with a mini-bio of Cary Grant, from his own perspective, paying particular attention to Grant's perfectionism. He limns Richard Burton, and takes up cudgels on his behalf, where so many deplored Burton for forsaking the stage for film. He wangled a visit to the gold repository beneath Manhattan, where just one of the larger rooms housed 50,000 bars of bullion, which took a year for three shifts of "stackers" to assemble; he was soon overwhelmed by the inanity of it all (gold having no stable value any more), and fled to the street. It soon dawns: in his 88+ years, this fellow has done a great many things that none of us have a hope of experiencing, and has written about all of them.

I wonder how many typewriters he's worn out?

Defeated by Density

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, sociology, neuroscience, homeostasis

Never before have I stopped reading a book because I just could not read it! Antonio Damasio, in The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures, clearly has something important to say, but I cannot discern more than the barest outline of what that might be. And I may have missed his point entirely.

I extracted this, I think, from reading the first half of the book: What drives life, evolution, growth, even motivation, and the development of culture, is the seeking for homeostasis. Definitions of homeostasis:

the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. (the definition proffered by Google)

the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function. (Dictionary.com)

I gathered two of several definitions. I discern that the core meaning of homeostasis is "a seeking for at least local equilibrium in a dynamic system." Consider this: most feelings are detectors of non-equilibrium.

For example, hunger indicates that bodily fuel supplies are running low. The sensors in the body whose signals are gathered and combined into "hunger" detect the level of sugar in the blood, the distension (or lack of it) of the stomach, and several other items. If we eat "just enough", at an appropriate pace (most of us eat too fast), the sensation "hunger" subsides, and at best, we feel nothing. If we overeat, the distension sensors (no doubt aided by a few other kinds of sensor) send signals that make us feel "too full" or even "upset stomach".

In the early chapters of the book, the author explains the origin of life as the result of homeostasis-seeking by variously-enclosed "bags" of chemicals. The most successful of these eventually developed into prokaryotic cells (bacteria or archaea, we're not sure which came first).

Fast-forward to about a quarter of the way through the book: brains, and animal bodies to carry them around and act as their interface with everything "out there", developed as improved homeostatic controllers. The human brain may be the best so far, though that is debatable. Note that the portion of our brain of which we are most proud, the cerebrum and cerebral cortex, comprises 85% of the brain's mass, and contains about 20% of the total number of neurons in the brain. Whatever our consciousness is (Damasio has a chapter on that), it is in this portion, with strong support by the "limbic system", another percent or two at most. What of the rest? About 80% of the brain's neurons are found in the cerebellum ("little brain"), which weighs just 14% of the total. But the cerebellum and the rest of the hindbrain control and measure everything going on in our bodies.

Side note: though much is made of Artificial Intelligence, all such efforts and products to date seek to mimic or duplicate functions of the cerebrum. Until we know more about the cerebellum, so that AI can be properly embodied, all our AI products will be very fragile and prone to gross errors.

The chapter "Consciousness" occurs about 45% of the way through the book (p. 143). This is clearly not the author's goal, but a waystation as he approaches his subject, Culture. I didn't get much farther before I bogged down. In the first few chapters, I found reading it rough going, but I persevered. By the time I got to page 180, it became too tiring for me to extract meaning from the author's text.

I "Fogged" a few portions of the book, and compared to other texts. The "Fog Index" of Robert Gunning is one among many methods for determining the reading level of some text. It has the virtue of being calculable manually. The number so produced is roughly equal to the grade level in American schools of the 1940's. Thus a Fog Index (FI) of 12 indicates that one must graduate high school to have the skills to comfortably read the text. Sad to say, the average high school graduate of 2019 AD would struggle to read text with FI greater than 9. This underlies the low subscription rates of Scientific American, to which I have subscribed since the age of 14. Articles in this journal typically have FI of 12-13.

A "good" Fog Index requires about 100 words, or at least 80. I selected four paragraphs to "Fog", two (Fogged separately) on page 25, and one each on pages 145 and 224. The results? In order:

19.1, 16.4, 13.6, and 16.8

for an average of 16.

For comparison I chose two paragraphs chosen at random from the August 2019 issue of Scientific American, and two from the book Superfreakonomics by Levitt and Dubner. In order:

15.1 and 13.7, averaging 14.4
10.9 and 14.3, averaging 12.7

Whether these are all properly done (they all seem a bit high to me, by about +2), they are comparative. They show that the reading level of Strange Order is quite high, and is sometimes very high! However, this is not the whole story. I decline to give examples, but the writing is often clumsy, which distracts a reader from the point.

The fact that it has been 20 days since my last book review in only due 50% to these reading difficulties. From August 1-11 I was away and did not take the book. When I laid down the book on July 31, I was at page 175. Seven days of reading typically gets me about twice that far in any book. After my return two days ago, I managed five more pages before giving up.

I have this to say by way of conclusion: Dr. Damasio clearly has something significant to say, though I am not sure I fully agree with his thesis. He'd have done better to collaborate with someone who knows how to render text into greater readability. As to his thesis, I get an impression best summarized in the adage, "To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Homeostasis is significant, and can provide a unifying paradigm, but I think this author overdoes it.