What is an Intelligent Machine? (Ashby, 1961)

What is an Intelligent Machine? (Ashby, 1961)

W. Ross Ashby

In: Conant, Mechanisms of Intelligence, 1981

JLJ - Ashby is all wound up over selection. I would claim that selection is only the tip of the iceberg.

We as humans select, in our internal conversation, before we select (as a choice) in the outside world. We select our frame of reference, we select what we notice, we select a sign-symbol-system which we then interpret, we select "musings" and turn them into alternatives, we select a format for evaluating and stress-testing these alternatives, we select the critical success factors that we use to determine action in the form of "I should probably do something about that", we select (or not) a review of our preliminary decision, we select over and over again as we intelligently converse with ourselves, in question-and-answer format. It is the model we construct of reality, and the scenarios that we develop in our mind as we imagine what will happen next, the actions that we take to resolve some of the ambiguity in this world, that form the greater - the deliberative - part of "selection". The selection itself might just be signing a contract, or saying "yes" to a proposal, or telling someone that you will get back to them later - and then never do so.

An "intelligent" machine will contain software written by an intelligent human, which it will process blindly, not knowing whether it is launching a missile, determining the next move in a social game, or sitting in an endless loop written by a programmer who is bored and wants to play a prank on a co-worker. The machine is a tool, I feel, that can "act" intelligently when animated by instructions which are cleverly written by a human. The sign-symbol-interpreted-system which makes up the body of the software operates on information in the world in a way that transforms it into intelligent behavior. If it selects, it first has the equivalent of a human internal conversation, before it does so. Ironically, it will "select", but will never even "know" that it is selecting, or what exactly it is that it has selected. A strange kind of "intelligence", an odd kind of "selection".

I would claim the we "select" all the time, so that we might better adapt ourselves to the world we live in and the world we predict is coming into being. We select, so that we might continue to maneuver with ease in this ever-changing 'world'. Adaptive capacity is part of what turns situations in our favor, or what mitigates "bad luck" so that it is not "very bad luck". We select as part of a plan in determining how to 'go on'. We 'select', so that we are not part of someone else's selection plan.

p.295 Man and computer show their powers alike, by appropriate selection. Both are bounded by the fact that appropriate selection (to a degree better than chance) can be achieved only as a consequence of information received and processed.
Machines can be made as intelligent as we please, but both they and man are bounded by the fact that their intelligence cannot exceed their powers of receiving and processing information.

p.297 Not a single clear counter-example has been given in the last 10 years to show that an intelligent system is anything other than one which achieves appropriate selection. This is the touchstone of intelligence. According to this view, intelligent is as intelligent does.

p.298 an intelligent machine can be defined as a system that utilizes information, and processes it with high efficiency, so as to achieve a high intensity of appropriate selection. If it is to show really high intelligence, it must process a really large quantity of information, and the efficiency should be really high.
In biological processes, appropriate selection and intelligence is shown essentially by regulation; the living organism, when it acts "intelligently," acts so as to keep itself alive. It acts, in other words, so as to keep the essential variables on which its existence depends within physical limits. This is a straightforward act of appropriate selection, and the animals, as they ascend the scale of intelligence, show their ascent precisely by their power of regulating their environment in spite of greater ranges of stresses coming to them.

p.298 "regulation" simply means that in spite of many threatened deviations from the optimum, the organism so behaves that the deviation does not occur; that is to say, the correct form is maintained. This achieving of a correct final form, repeatedly in spite of a stream of disturbances, is clearly homologous with the correction of noise by a correction channel. The noise threatens to drive the form or message from its desired shape and he correction channel so acts as to bring it back to the true form. A natural measure of the degree of intelligence can thus be given in the terms of Shannon's theory of communication, and with it not merely a measure but a complete grasp of the logic of the situation and of what is implied. [JLJ - this seems to ignore the complexity of the environment.]

p.298-299 Any system that achieves appropriate selection (to a degree better than chance) does so as a consequence of information received... all systems whether human or mechanical are subject to this postulate - they can achieve appropriate selection only if they receive and process the appropriate amount of information... When a human being undertakes such activities of correction, or of regulation, or of appropriate selection, he is acting as the correction channel, and he cannot achieve this appropriate selection unless he receives and transmits the necessary quantity of information.
The same point can be made in a simpler and more primitive form, as I have done in the law of requisite variety; which shows that in the most obvious and common sense way the processing of the necessary quantity of information must be done if appropriate selection is to be achieved by law, and not by mere magic.

p.300-301 The point seems to be... that we tended grossly to misestimate the quantities of information that were used by computers and by people... What I am saying is that if the measure is applied to both on a similar basis it will be found that each, computer and living brain, can achieve appropriate selection precisely so far as it is allowed to by the quantity of information that it has received and processed.
Because of this hidden preprogramming of every human being, nothing is easier than for him to achieve results with extreme quickness, provided the question falls within his specialized range.

p.302 Undoubtedly, one of the reasons why a person is a genius is that he pays the price for it by sheer hard work. He processes the necessarily large quantity of information.

p.303 in talking about "intelligence", whether of the living brain or of the machine, we must give up talking about two sorts of intelligence. There is only one sort of intelligence. It is shown in essentially the same way whether the brain is living or mechanical. It shows itself by appropriate selection. It always implies the same underlying activity - that information in the required quantity is taken in... and that this quantity of information is processed with sufficient efficiency so that the total quantity does not fall below the point where it is no longer sufficient to allow the appropriate selection.

p.305 If we accept the limitation - that appropriate selection can be achieved only to the degree that information is received and processed - and if we accept that this limitation holds absolutely over all brains, human and mechanical, our work, though less intoxicating, will in fact be more realistic. Those who build intelligent machines on this basis will outdistance those who want to build them on the old and superstitious basis that the human brain can do anything.