by Jason Sorrell

Created on: January 16, 2009   Last Updated: September 11, 2010

I think quite a bit. That may not immediately make much sense or have any real impact on anyone, as I believe everyone is involved in some sort of active thought process, even in sleep. However, as my girlfriend will tell you, I find myself thinking about things that have little or no immediate relevance to what I am doing. This is an essay on intelligence, in particular a method for simulating intelligence which would bring into question what intelligence is. I am not a psychologist, and, since I lack a degree, only an amateur philosopher. Still, here is an idea based on lay-person research, random absorption of ideas, and what may amount to be a weak understanding of what intelligence is.

Webster defines intelligence as the ability to learn and understand. However, the only way to express intelligence is to communicate to another in a manner that is convincing of your ability to learn and understand. In our world, that doesn't take much, and we probably are very generous with the benefit of the doubt in most cases. So, I found myself wondering, just what would need to be done to convince a person that a machine has intelligence?

What kind of had me going on this idea was Star Wars. Many movies and stories have added to this theory, which may not seem like much of a base for a discussion such as this, but bear with me. In Star Wars, a machine, C3PO, acts as a "protocol droid". Its function was to understand languages and cultures, and to advise from that base of programmed information proper etiquette and speed communications. This machine in the story had in its programming as a base for these calculations fifty million languages from which to instantaneously draw comparisons and make conclusions. Of course, this is a fictional machine, but even though it was never discussed as an artificial intelligence (in fact, in later films it was made clear that intelligent machines were outlawed), it was treated as such by the other characters. This had me thinking how that would be done.

You would want to start simple, so I searched for a simpler real-life example. I came upon the magic eight-ball, a novelty device used to "predict" the future by having several often ambiguous options appearing randomly (yes, no, ask later, etc.). There are those who are amazed with its accuracy and consider it supernatural in its process. My theory for an intelligence simulator is based on this, thus I like to call it the "8-Ball Theory".

Imagine a computer set-up like an 8-ball;

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