Monday, May 11, 2009

We intelligent because we connected, and unless we connected

We have thought of developing artificial intelligence for long time. Many Sci-Fi novels and movies have predicted the intelligent robots that may bring us both convenience in life and trouble in society. Nearly all of them, however, are trapped by a tiny little misconception of intelligence. Nobody could be really intelligent until he is connected in intelligence. Therefore, the so-called intelligent robots are impossible to be made until we have already pre-constructed an intelligent society (such as an intelligent web) for them to communicate. Standalone will NEVER lead to true intelligence, even the artificial ones.

Truly this is a point that is easy to be overlooked. Many of us are not aware of the fact that we are intelligent because we are born in an interconnected web of intelligence. This situation is by default to nearly every one of us. If we take a look at the very few who are born outside the normal human society and are not able to connect to the pool of human intelligence (such as the kids adopted by animals), they are instead very well adapted to the respective animal intelligence. And for those who are forced to be isolated to any web of intelligence, they show no intelligence at all in any aspect. People may explain the reason to be the lack of "education". Such an explanation is not totally sound because there are many uneducated ones in our normal human society who are very intelligence. Hence the main point is indeed whether the one is able to connect to a pre-existing web of intelligence. Once connected, the true intelligence follows.

We may derive a few very interesting conclusions by applying the insight back to the study of artificial intelligence and Semantic Web. For example, the construction of the Semantic Web may be the prerequisite of developing the true intelligent robots (i.e., the real artificial intelligence). Deep Blue was smart. But any simpler robot (i.e. with simpler algorithms coded) built upon Semantic Web will be 100 times smarter than the Deep Blue. Moreover, this insight could be a momentum for linking the Semantic Web research to the real world practices because it opens a door of the wild wild west that is full of potential of commercial opportunities. The insight allows us to view the picture of Semantic Web in a fresh new way.

In progress, I will post more articles in this track of new intelligence. By the way, the point is also a derivation of the model of Web evolution I suggested.

1 comment:

adlin said...

Enjoyed this post!