A visitor to my Quora site, Intelligence and IQ, posed the question above and this post is my response.
Here are two questions that require a high level of intelligence and knowledge before they can be understood and then addressed. Detailed discussions of several such questions are provided at https://www.intelligence-and-iq.com/intelligence/
Will artificial intelligence ever surpass human intelligence?
As our species embraced the power of rational thinking, we began to develop machines that could simulate rational thought. Beginning at first as an adjunct to human intelligence, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) expanded its purview to create computers that could outperform humans in chess, Jeopardy! and a host of other cerebral challenges. Some computer scientists now believe that quantum computers may eventually yield offspring of superior intelligence, leading to a sequence of generations of computers that far surpass their intellectually inferior human creators. Those who ascribe to this belief called “hard AI” argue that computers may ultimately develop emotions and identities, evolving in a reverse sequence to the evolution of human cognition and culminating in a machine like HAL, depicted in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, other scientists such as Roger Penrose argue that computers are confined to algorithmic processes and will not be able to simulate all the dimensions of human intelligence. Resolving this question will require a deep understanding of human cognitive function (neurology) and computer engineering.
How Can we Interpret Quantum Weirdness?
In 1935, the year that Schrödinger introduced the gedanken experiment involving the superposition of his cat’s states of existence, Einstein and two colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen proposed another gedanken experiment, now known acronymically as the EPR paradox. To show the perceived flaw in the Copenhagan concept of superimposed states, they proposed a situation in which two elementary particles locked in a no-spin pairing suddenly fly apart. Since the particles were originally part of a no-spin pair, they must have opposite spin. After the particles are miles apart, physicist Samantha measures the spin of one particle and discovers that it is spinning clockwise in a certain direction. This tells her that the other particle is spinning counterclockwise. When Sam investigates the spin of the other particle he verifies that, indeed, it is spinning in the opposite direction. There are two possible interpretations of what happened:
a) Each particle was simultaneously in two superimposed states: spin up and spin down. Samantha’s measuring of one particle caused the collapse of the two states into a definite state. This caused the other particle to collapse also into the opposite state, by some mysterious communication at a distance.
b) The two particles had definite spins that were opposite at the outset, so measuring the spin of one particle was enough to deduce the spin of the other. For example, if a pair of gloves were in a box that exploded, sending both gloves in opposite directions, the discovery of a right-handed glove at one location would indicate that the glove at the other location was a left-handed glove.
In their EPR paper, Einstein and his coauthors dismissed explanation “a” as untenable, since this would imply that previously connected particles could interact with each other when separated by great distances. But alternative explanation “b” left unanswered the question, “If quantum physics is complete, why can’t it predict the spin state of the particles before measuring them?” Einstein and others who were reluctant to abandon determinism, suggested that other hidden variables that quantum physics had not yet identified would eventually restore determinacy to quantum physics.
The Copenhagen interpretation languished in limbo for three more decades until 1964 when Irish physicist John Stewart Bell published a remarkable result now called Bell’s Theorem. In his paper On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox, he deduced, using simple logic and the quantum properties of spin, that if it were possible to predict the spin of an elementary particle without measuring, then it would lead to a logical contradiction. This invalidated interpretation “b” and with it, the EPR hope that a method of predicting the spin of an elementary particle was possible. Physicists were compelled to accept interpretation “a”, that the particles, even when separated by large distances, are interconnected. This interconnectedness, now called entanglement, was later verified by experiment. However, all this leaves us with a challenge to the basic tenets of physics. Is determinism an illusion? Are events different for different observers? Do objects exist independent of their observers? These questions bring us back to many of the deep intellectual questions posed by philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment, but now we are better equipped with technologies to search for answers–or are these questions too deep to reach?
The best minds that our species can produce are working hard on such questions, while most of humanity deals with day-to-day challenges, unaware of the levels of complexity that underpin human perception and consciousness.
