What do you mean by intelligence ? (Score 1)

For three weeks, my postgrad class in constraint satisfaction has been debating the question "what is intelligence?". It has been a very thought provoking and satisfying debate which has left us all with differing opinions and thoughts on the matter. It is important to note that such debates are commonplace in the AI field (just mention the Turing Test) because AI is a combination of philosophy, psychology, biology and computer science disciplines.

Moving on topic (slightly), my current thoughts are along the lines of there being some kind of "mystery" (among other factors) attached to the term intelligence. For example, if we showed a calculator to someone fifty years ago, they would have had no problem calling this device "intelligent" amazed at its problem solving ability (in math). Yet today, because we know the principles involved in making such a device, we would hardly brand it so. Many times I have thought of a search technique as smart when it has been described at a high-level, but when you look under the hood, it becomes a bit "oh really, is that all".

Personally, I'm not sure if there is a difference between mechanical and biological intelligence. I think a major difference is in the knowing of how it works. (Which begs the question of what will we think of ourselves if we nut out how the brain works. eg. Intelligent? ... no just better connected).