What is Intelligence?

Abstract

This article examines the concept of intelligence, particularly within the context of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and proposes a working definition. Recognizing the challenge in defining intelligence precisely, the article agrees with the imprecise, functional definitions often used in AI research, citing examples from the evolution of self-driving cars. It suggests using “optimization power,” i.e., an agent’s ability to achieve goals across a range of environments, as a basis for defining intelligence. The definition is expanded to “optimization power divided by resources used”, an approach resonant with the concept of efficient cross-domain optimization. The author asserts that while this definition remains imprecise, it’s useful for the work conducted by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. – AI-generated abstract.