On the hunt for universal intelligence

January 28, 2011 | Source: PhysOrg.com

A team of Spanish and Australian researchers have taken a first step towards a scientific method to measure the intelligence of a human being, an animal, a machine or an extra-terrestrial.

The authors have used interactive exercises in settings with a difficulty level estimated by calculating the so-called “Kolmogorov complexity” (they measure the number of computational resources needed to describe an object or a piece of information). This makes them different from traditional psychometric tests and artificial intelligence tests (such as the Turing test).

The most direct application of this study is in the field of artificial intelligence. Until now there has not been any way of checking whether current systems are more intelligent than the ones in use 20 years ago.

And what is even “more important” is that there were no theories or tools to evaluate and compare future intelligent systems that could demonstrate intelligence greater than human intelligence.