Intelligence Evolution: The Beginning

The achievements of robotics and, especially, the expenses for them * made the idea sufficiently clear that not only one person has the intellect, that it is not only in pets, whose behavior we are more or less closely familiar with, but even in single-celled organisms.

A note to Esthete: * The thought that a missile worth a million dollars sometimes misses the target, and a sperm cell that costs nothing at all - no - can shock representatives of the military-industrial complex (s) A. Rozov

It turns out that human intelligence can not be considered as something exclusive, as previously thought, but rather as a new generation in a series of models of intellects from the workshop of nature.

Therefore, in order to study the human intellect, it would be nice to understand not only himself, but also the whole path traveled by nature. The proposed original evolutionary classification of intelligence by generation (or evolutionary level) will clarify the milestones of this path.

Everyone who is interested in the topic, welcome to cat.

Formulation of the problem

The question that needs to be solved when setting the task: why do we even need to know how human intelligence appeared, became more complicated and, finally, became what it is?

The most obvious answer: to look at how everything happened in the workshop of nature, to make its likeness - artificial intelligence (AI).

In fact, we very positively perceive AI to a certain level of intelligence: as a person’s liberator from routine work. Let the robots sort out potatoes, pour beer into bottles, close them with lids, screw nuts and lead us to a bright future filled with creative work and blessed idleness.

When we encounter higher manifestations of intelligence, an anxious attitude appears. Even at the design stage of the robot driver, an ambiguous attitude arises, and right at the stage of setting the task: “If an emergency, hopeless situation occurs, what should I choose? To move a group of people by car, one pregnant woman or a lonely child? ”

When this happens to a person - this is a tragedy, he will dream about the killed people, he will suffer, even if he has no fault. And this torment to some extent in our eyes justifies what happened. The robot driver will choose the option absolutely emotionless, soullessly weighing lives on the scales of the matrices and calculating the minimum of damage by the speedy descent method (well, or another mathematical method) and this scares us.

Let us recognize that emotions are important to us, without them we will not be able to accept highly intelligent robots into our community. And where did the emotions come from? We know that animals have emotions too: domestic ones, for sure. We see that they are happy, sad, angry, envious, jealous, longing and indignant - just like us.

And yet, why do we even need highly intelligent robots? For work in dangerous places inaccessible to humans (Mars is a planet of robots, sic!), For solving tasks that are difficult for humans to access due to biological restrictions (primarily fatigue). After all, they also make a driver-driver precisely because a tired person who drives home after work is a potential source of an accident.

And finally: the economic economy has become so complex that managing it begins to exceed any conceivable ability of one person. And the solution through managing a group of people, unfortunately, is not additive, that is, even if we assume that 2 people will do 2 times more work, then 1000 people will definitely not do 1000 more.

Note to Estete: “Shit” by Sharik and Matroskin is a great example of how 2 individuals can work collectively worse than one.

Any group of people, which is proven statistically significant, spends more time on relationships among themselves instead of work. Repeatedly conducted experiments showed that the dismissal of a significant part of the employees of the bureaucratic structure did not worsen its work in any way, but even improved it.

Note to Estete: “Growth leads to complexity, and complexity is the end of the road” (c) Parkinson's Laws. S. Parkinson

Note that we are very approving of robots that accept applications from us to bureaucratic authorities via the Internet and send certificates, call us taxis and reserve hotel rooms, completely replacing entire classes of service.

As a result, we are witnessing the process of the emergence of more and more highly intelligent robots. Obviously, this process is inevitable and will continue.

Note to Esthete: If the process cannot be stopped, it should be headed (s). author unknown

However, in order to lead a process, it is highly desirable to understand its history and have some kind of forecast for the future. All this makes the theory of the evolution of intelligence in demand, which to some extent logically explains: how intelligence developed and how it reached its present peak in the form of human intelligence and what will happen next.

Generational classification of intelligence

As we can observe, human intelligence is qualitatively different from the intelligence of a pet. The cat does not order pizza, does not clean the house, does not walk the dog at all because he has paws. This is just technically surmountable; you can easily come up with robotic interfaces for a cat.

Nevertheless, which of the cat owners honestly does not recognize that the cat is the smartest animal?

Let's assume that the level of intelligence is directly related to individualization. This will allow us to introduce 4 + 1 levels or generations of intelligence.

Zero individualization is possessed by the intellect, completely consisting of algorithms. Algorithms (or in other words: program code) are unchanged and the individuality of their carrier (computer or animal) will differ only in technical serviceability.

Reflexes give living beings the first level of individualization. This is a well-studied phenomenon and reflexes are divided into conditional and unconditioned. The first level of individualization is, of course, unconditioned reflexes. The evolution of living creatures occurs due to mutations that provide individual variability. Each individual has a slightly different structure of the neural network, which ensures the fulfillment of the reflex, and the habitat will ensure that unsuccessful variants do not survive and produce offspring with a similar network structure.

The second level of individualization is conditioned reflexes. The fundamental difference is that the reflex is not fixed forever, but can change during the life of one individual. Thus, the degree of individualization expands significantly.

The third level of individualization is communicative. The main innovation of the level is the ability to trigger a reflex through a conditional information signal. Individualization is further expanded through the volume of individually perceived and generated sequences of communication signals. Bearers of intelligence can leave a solitary lifestyle and become able to form flocks and begin to coordinate their actions. Moreover, the possibility of interspecific informational interaction appears and is actively used.

And finally, the fourth level is an abstract logical one. This is the level of man. Communication turns into speech. Culture appears as a sum of knowledge independent of an individual individual, but at the same time potentially accessible to everyone. Individualization reaches a potentially infinite level.

Summary

We will bring together the characteristics of generations of intelligence in a table for greater ease of understanding

What gives such a classification? And how is she better than many others? The answer to these questions can be read in the next article, “Robots and Emotions,” in which, already relying on the classification introduced, the mechanism for the appearance of emotions, their significance and why robots and we humans need them, will be examined in detail.

Thanks and invitations

The author thanks Professor N.V. Khamitov for the invaluable help provided during the development of this theory.

The author invites everyone, and especially evolutionary biologists, to participate in the discussion, or maybe, carried away, and join the work on the theory.