General intelligence

"How strange that our most advanced systems can compete with human specialists, yet be unable to do many things that seem easy to children."
Marvin Minsky
There have been many achievements by symbolic approaches in AI. Most of these are focused on the category ``systems that think rationally'' (as discussed in section 1.3.2) and are highly specialized. ``[M]ost well-structured problems such as textbook math and science problems, are simple because they tend to engage a constrained set of variables that behave in a predictable ways.'' [Ese06]. There are two types of intelligence: fluid or crystallized. Roughly, the former is categorized as the ability to learn or to solve problems, the latter is that which is learned. General intelligence (Spearman's g-factor) is highly related to the fluid type of intelligence. Moreover, there is a strong neural basis for this relation. The general form of intelligence is highly influenced specifically by a frontal system [JD00].



Erik de Bruijn 2007-10-19