Artificial General Intelligence Quotes

The conference guide yielded up a plethora of fascinating talks: Neural Substrates of Symbolic Reasoning, Intelligence and Prospects for Increasing It, Emotive-Loop Programming: A New Path to Artificial General Intelligence. How could they even hold these talks? In the US the topics of half of them would be classified as Emerging Technological Threats. No wonder the international meeting trumps the US neuroscience meetings these days, Kade thought. The cutting edge stuff isn't legal at home any more. ~ Ramez Naam

To be free one must be a slave to reason. But to be a slave to reason (the very condition of freedom) exposes one to both the revisionary power and the constructive compulsion of reason. This susceptibility is terminally amplified once the commitment to the autonomy of reason and autonomous engagement with discursive practices are sufficiently elaborated. That is to say, when the autonomy of reason is understood as the automation of reason and discursive practices - the philosophical rather than classically symbolic thesis regarding artificial general intelligence. ~ Reza Negarestani

The five phases of Artificial Intelligence (AI 5.0) are Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Artificial Consciousness, Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) and Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence (CAS). ~ Amit Ray

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The remedy for our social evils does not consist so much in changing the system of government as it does in increasing the general intelligence of the people so that they may learn how to govern. ~ Charles Lindbergh

We may acknowledge, intellectually, our body's reliance upon those plants and animals that we consume as nourishment, yet the civilized mind still feels itself somehow separate, autonomous, independent of the body and of bodily nature in general. Only as we begin to notice and to experience, once again, our immersion in the invisible air do we start to recall what it is to be fully a part of this world… This breathing landscape is no longer just a passive backdrop against which human history unfolds, but a potentized field of intelligence in which our actions participate. ~ David Abram

By standard intelligence texts, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this
and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes! It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed; dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around. ~ Alexandra Horowitz

The higher the general average of intelligence, all things else being equal, the less the disposition to be meddlesome, critical, and overbearing. ~ Paul Harris

Rest in inaction, and the world will be reformed of itself; Forget your body and spit forth intelligence. Ignore all differences and become one with the Infinite. Release your mind, and free your spirit. Be vacuous, be devoid of soul. Thus will things grow and prosper and return to their Rust and Rest. Returning to their Root. Returning to their Root without their knowing it, the result will be a formless whole which will never be cut up, to know it is to cut it up. (Great Nebulous says to General Clouds) ~ Zhuangzi

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. ~ George Santayana

It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results. ~ Sun Tzu

Willing to fight for freedom alongside her warriors, Nzinga demonstrated bravery, intelligence, and a relentless drive to bring peace to her people. A true anti-terrorism strategist and an original freedom fighter. Queen Nzinga reflects the dignity of the Ndongos and Angola in particular, but of Africa and all women in general. ~ Dom Pedro V

Perhaps what matters," Sunstein muses, "is not whether people are right on the facts, but whether they are frightened." And people do seem to be frightened. We are locking our doors and pulling our children out of public school and buying guns and ritually sanitizing our hands to allay a wide range of fears, most of which are essentially fears of other people. All the while we are also, in our way, reckless. We get intoxicated, from the Latin "to poison," for fun. This contradiction leads Sunstein to worry that regulatory laws based on the priorities of the general public maybe prone to a pattern of "paranoia and neglect." Too much attention may be spent on minimal risks, while too little is paid to pressing threats. Paranoia, the theorist Eve Sedgwick observes, tends to be contagious. She calls it a "strong theory," meaning a wide-ranging, reductive theory that displaces other ways of thinking. And paranoia very frequently passes for intelligence. As Sedgwick observes, "to theorize out of anything but a paranoid critical stance has come to seem naïve, pious, or complaisant." She does not believe that paranoid thinking is necessarily delusional or wrong, but only that there is value to approaches that are less rooted in suspicion. "Paranoia," Sedgwick writes, "knows some things well and others poorly. ~ Eula Biss

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence. ~ Agnes Repplier

The idea that intelligence can be quantitatively measured along a single linear scale has caused untold harm to our society in general, and to education in particular. ~ Neil Postman

And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Asking Do Chiropractors Pray? in a book by that title, B. J. Palmer answered definitively that "no Chiropractor would pray on his knees in a supplication to some invisible power." He conceptualized "Innate Intelligence WITHIN man as the all-wise, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Director-General who asserts that THE ONLY possible cause and cure are WITHIN man. ~ Candy Gunther Brown

His mind was of a most phlegmatic sort, cool in its private applications, quick, and excessively rational; he possessed a fault common to those of high intelligence, however, which was that he tended to regard the gift of his intellect as a license of a kind, by whose rarefied authority he was protected, in all circumstances, from ever behaving ill. He considered his moral obligations to be of an altogether different class than those of lesser men, and so rarely felt shame or compunction, except in very general terms. ~ Eleanor Catton

You're right: if there's sentient life behind the border, it probably won't share my goals. Unlike the people in this room, who all want exactly the same things in life as I do, and have precisely the same tastes in food, art, music, and sex. Unlike the people of Schur, and Cartan, and Zapata - who I came here in the hope of protecting, after losing my own home - who doubtless celebrate all the same festivals, delight in the same songs and stories, and gather every fortieth night to watch actors perform the same plays, in the same language, from the same undisputed canon, as the people I left behind.

"If there's sentient life behind the border, of course we couldn't empathize with it. These creatures are unlikely to possess cute mammalian neonate faces, or anything else we might mistake for human features. None of us could have the imagination to get over such insurmountable barriers, or the wit to apply such difficult abstractions as the General Intelligence theorem - though since every twelve-year-old on my home world was required to master that result, it must be universally known on this side of the border.

"You're right: we should give up responsibility for making any difficult moral judgments, and surrender to the dictates of natural selection. Evolution cares so much about our happiness that no one who's obeyed an inherited urge has ever suffered a moment's regret for it. History is full of joyful case studies of people who followed their na ~ Greg Egan

IQ is a general measure of socially acceptable categorization and reasoning skills. IQ tests were designed in behaviorism's heyday, when there was little interest in cognitive structure. [...] In other societies, a normal distribution of some general measure of social intelligence might look very different; some "normal" members of our society could well produce a score that's a standard deviation from "normal" members of another society on that other society's test. ~ Scott Atran

We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature: but such constructive whole, residing in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of positive law, that ever has been or can be made on the principles of artificial incorporation. Out of civil society nature knows nothing of it; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwise than by very long training, brought at all to submit to it. . . . This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the smaller number may be the stronger force, and where apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the other little else than impetuous appetite; all this must be the result of a very particular and special convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a strong hand, vested with stationary, permanent power, to enforce this sort of constructive general will. ~ Edmund Burke

It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth, where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a helpless infant... is a direct fulfilment of all, or of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires - or forbidden to him - he attributed to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times... Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will increase man's likeness to a god still more. ~ Sigmund Freud

What is important to a relationship is a harmony of emotional roles and not too great a disparity in the general level of intelligence. ~ Mirra Komarovsky

The consideration of man's body has not changed to meet the new conditions of this artificial environment that has replaced his natural one. The result is that of perceptual discord between man and his environment. The effect of this discord is a general deterioration of man's body, the symptoms of which are termed disease. ~ Hilton Hotema

McDougall does not dispute the thesis as to
the collective inhibition of intelligence in groups
(p. 41). He says that the minds of lower intelligence
bring down those of a higher order to their own
level. The latter are obstructed in their activity,
because in general an intensification of emotion
creates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectual
work, and further because the individuals are intimidated
by the group and their mental activity is
not free, and because there is a lowering in each
individual of his sense of responsibility for his own
performances. ~ Sigmund Freud

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune ~ Adam Smith

Under Cheney's direction, the United States moved to restore the powers of secret intelligence that had flourished for fifty-five years under J. Edgar Hoover. In public speeches, the president, the vice president, and the attorney general renewed the spirit of the Red raids. In top secret orders, they revived the techniques of surveillance that the FBI had used in the war on communism. The ~ Tim Weiner

Such a crises occurs only where the ever-lengthening chain of payments,
and an artificial system of settling them, has been fully
developed. Whenever there is a general and extensive disturbance
of this mechanism, no matter what its cause, money becomes
suddenly and immediately transformed from its merely ideal shape
of money of account into hard cash. Profane commodities can no
longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes
valueless, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own
independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois, with
the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicating prosperity,
declares money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are
money. But now the cry is everywhere that money alone is a
commodity! As the hart pants after fresh water, so pants his soul
after money, the only wealth. ~ Karl Marx

So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine. ~ Maureen Dowd

3. It has been found that young animals, birds, etc., depend upon the example and instruction of adults for the first performance of many actions that seem to be instinctive. This dependence may exist even in cases in which there is yet a congenital tendency to perform the action. Many birds, for example, have a general instinct to build a nest; but in many cases, if put in artificial circumstances, they build imperfect nests. Birds also have an instinct to make vocal calls; but if kept from birth out of hearing of the peculiar notes of their species, they come to make cries of a different sort, or learn to make the notes of some other species with which they are thrown. 4. ~ James Mark Baldwin

That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters. ~ H.L. Mencken

Shameful confession, one of my own Chelas (or so it is rather incredibly reported to me) said recently: "Self-discipline is a form of Restriction." (That, you remember, is "The word of Sin.") Of all the utter rubbish! (Anyhow, he was a "centre of pestilence" for discussing the Book at all.) About 90 percent of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline. One is only allowed to do anything and everything so as to have more scope for exercising that virtue.

Concentrate on "Thou hast no right but to do thy will." The point is that any possible act is to be performed if it is a necessary factor in that Equation of your Will. Any act that is not such a factor, however harmless, noble, virtuous or what not, is at the best a waste of energy. But there are no artificial barriers on any type of act in general. The standard of conduct has one single touchstone. There may be - there will be - every kind of difficulty in determining whether, by this standard, any given act is 'right' or 'wrong'; but there should be no confusion. No act is righteous in itself, but only in reference to the True Will of the person who proposes to perform it. This is the Doctrine of Relativity applied to the moral sphere. ~ Aleister Crowley

Beliefs are a powerful thing. I often travel the world and sometimes the local waitresses attending me are nervous if they can't speak English. Now, when this happens, I point at the pictures in the menu. However, I've noticed that the ones with the strongest beliefs, the most nervous ones, still do a mistake in my order. Another interesting things to notice in these situations is that, when I correct them, by pointing again at what I ordered before, they recognize their mistake, but get angry, as if their mistake was my fault, and that's called irresponsibility. Now, when you combine irresponsibility with the wrong beliefs, you have a a very dumb person. That's what stupidity is, it's a human being doing the wrong things with the wrong beliefs and never ever accepting any responsibility for it. That's how those with the lowest spiritual conscience behave in general with themselves and others. ~ Robin Sacredfire

We know that blind evolutionary processes can produce human-level general intelligence, since they have already done so at least once. Evolutionary processes with foresight - that is, genetic programs designed and guided by an intelligent human programmer - should be able to achieve a similar outcome with far greater efficiency. ~ Nick Bostrom

Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence
and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Algiers was on the brink.

Before being recruited by the CIA, she had been a member of the ISA, known as "the Activity," one of the last truly dark units
within the DOD. Her job was to collect actionable intelligence for Special Operations units like Delta and SEAL Team 6.


Her decision to leave the Army was the only time Meg hadn't listened to her father, General "Black Jack" Harden. Not only
did he want her to stay in, but he was willing to call in some favors after she got passed over for major.


"I appreciate it, Dad, but I don't take charity," she had told him.

"All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and play the game. How hard is that?" he'd demanded. The Army was his life and
to this day he still didn't understand why she'd left ~ Sean Parnell

Accordingly, we find Euler and D'Alembert devoting their talent and their patience to the establishment of the laws of rotation of the solid bodies. Lagrange has incorporated his own analysis of the problem with his general treatment of mechanics, and since his time M. Poinsot has brought the subject under the power of a more searching analysis than that of the calculus, in which ideas take the place of symbols, and intelligent propositions supersede equations. ~ James Clerk Maxwell

On August 1, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel granted the CIA's request to begin water-boarding Abu Zubaydah. The technique, tantamount to torture, was designed to elicit confessions through the threat of imminent death by drowning. That same day John Yoo, now a deputy to Attorney General Ashcroft, advised the White House that the laws against torture did not apply to American interrogators. The president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the director of Central Intelligence approved. The ~ Tim Weiner

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. ~ Martin Gardner

So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted. ~ Charles Darwin

To do well those thing which God ordained to be the common lot of all man-kind, is the truest greatness. To be a successful father or a successful mother is greater than to be a successful general or a successful statesman ...
We should never be discouraged in those daily tasks which God has ordained to the common lot of man ...
Let us not be trying to substitute an artificial life for the true one. ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

The too perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, a general dwindling in size strength and intelligence. ~ H.G.Wells

The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance. ~ Lucy Grealy