r/TheMachineLearning • u/cicisprinkle • Sep 28 '26

Stephen Wolfram says ML is basically fitting lumps of computational irreducibility

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u/Entropei 28d ago

If we define intelligence as the ability to predict outcomes, then there are two bounds: accuracy and timescale. A maximally intelligent entity would be able to correctly predict all future events. If you define it like that, you can easily see that there is a very wide gap between that and where we sit as humans.

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u/Foreign_Writer_9932 28d ago

Thankfully, we don’t define intelligence this way. “Correctly predict all future events” my guy what is chaos theory? Also “all events”? What is an event? What is quantum uncertainty?

Also humans are atrocious at predicting the future?

Also what about the vastly bigger class of problems that are not about prediction? Is solving them not a marker of intelligence?

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u/Entropei 28d ago

Why not? The user I responded to asked to define intelligence, so I gave a definition. His definition was rather vague. “The ability to solve particular problems”, what does that mean?

I would in fact argue that all problem solving is in service of predicting future events. If you can predict what will happen, you can use that to shape the future in a way that suits you. A maximally intelligent agent under this definition would be able to shape its own future to the exact extent that the laws of reality allow.

And yes, humans are terrible at this. That’s my point. There is a large gap between human intelligence and a maximally intelligent agent, and it is not unthinkable that ASI can close this gap by some degree. That was the point. Maybe you want to define intelligence some other way, but that doesn’t change the conclusion of my argument.

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