Physicist Proposes New Way To Think About Intelligence

An anonymous reader writes "A single equation grounded in basic physics principles could describe intelligence and stimulate new insights in fields as diverse as finance and robotics, according to new research, reports Inside Science. Recent work in cosmology has suggested that universes that produce more entropy (or disorder) over their lifetimes tend to have more favorable properties for the existence of intelligent beings such as ourselves. A new study (pdf) in the journal Physical Review Letters led by Harvard and MIT physicist Alex Wissner-Gross suggests that this tentative connection between entropy production and intelligence may in fact go far deeper. In the new study, Dr. Wissner-Gross shows that remarkably sophisticated human-like "cognitive" behaviors such as upright walking, tool use, and even social cooperation (video) spontaneously result from a newly identified thermodynamic process that maximizes entropy production over periods of time much shorter than universe lifetimes, suggesting a potential cosmology-inspired path towards general artificial intelligence."

Comments

Relevant xkcd

[Karganeth]

http://xkcd.com/793/

Re:Am I missing something?

[Trepidity]

This is what it seems to be from a quick read. It would also explain why he would publish an AI paper in a physics journal, rather than in, you know, an AI journal: probably because he was hoping to get clueless physicists who aren't familiar with existing AI work as the reviewers.

Which isn't to say that physicists can't make good contributions to AI; a number have. But the ones who have an impact and provide something new: 1) explain how it relates to existing approaches, and why it's superior; and 2) publish their work actually relevant journals with qualified peer-reviewers.

Re:Relevant SMBC

[mTor]

And here's a relevant SMBC:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556

Re:Oh, he's back from his tour of the universes?

[Xaedalus]

Respectfully asking, what's wrong with saying, "What if?" You are correct, we haven't discovered any of what you described. But what I fail to understand is why you are so quick and so adamant to cite what we don't know and imply that speculation is pointless. The impression I get from your post is that we're better off limiting ourself to what we do know--which eventually just leads us to an endless loop because we never move beyond what we don't know.