A Discussion to Qualify Intelligence

Our understanding of intelligence is directed primarily at the human level. This paper attempts to give a more unifying definition that can be applied to the natural world in general and then Artificial Intelligence. The definition would be used more to qualify than quantify it and might help when making judgements on the matter. While correct behaviour is the preferred definition, a metric that is grounded in Kolmogorov’s Complexity Theory is suggested, which leads to a measurement about entropy. A version of an accepted AI test is then put forward as the ‘acid test’ and might be what a free-thinking program would try to achieve. Recent work by the author has been more from a direction of mechanical processes, built from structure. This paper agrees that intelligence is a pro-active event, but also notes a second aspect to it that is in the background and mechanical. The paper suggests looking at intelligence and the conscious as being slightly different, where the conscious is this more mechanical aspect. In fact, a surprising conclusion can be a passive but intelligent brain being invoked by active and less intelligent senses.