Primary Intelligence (Quantum Mechanics) — the Key to True AI
One of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics Paul Dirac atop of changing the methods of progress in theoretical physics provided us with the most clear description of secondary machine-like and primary animal-like components of natural intelligence in human perception in general.
It is enough to replace “the methods of progress in theoretical physics” in his following quote with “the ways of human perception.” Then “the classical tradition” will stand for the secondary machine-like component of natural intelligence. The new approach — i.e. quantum mechanics — is the primary animal-like component of natural intelligence.
“The methods of progress in theoretical physics have undergone a vast change during the present century. The classical tradition has been to consider the world to be an association of observable objects (particles, fluids, fields, etc.) moving about according to definite laws of force, so that one could form a mental picture in space and time of the whole scheme. This led to a physics whose aim was to make assumptions about the mechanism and forces connecting these observable objects, to account for their behaviour in the simplest possible way. It has become increasingly evident in recent times, however, that nature works on a different plan. Her fundamental laws do not govern the world as it appears in our mental picture in any very direct way, but instead they control a substrate of which we cannot form a mental picture without introducing irrelevancies. The formulation of these laws requires the use of the mathematics of transformations. The important things in the world appear as the invariants (or more generally the nearly invariants, or quantities with simple transformation properties) of these transformations.” [1]
As you can see from the above definition the secondary component of natural intelligence is dealing with “a mental picture in space and time” whilst the primary intelligence is dealing with that picture’s “substrate.” Secondary intelligence learns how to manipulate “the important things in the world” in a mental picture in space and time whilst primary intelligence enables those important things to appear in that mental picture in the first place.
Amazingly, Dirac’s textbook Principles of Quantum Mechanics details the mathematical formalism of the fundamental laws of perception (fundamental laws of Nature in Diracs quote above) which govern the observable world as a mental picture in space and time not directly but through the substrate of primary intelligence.
“We call a real dynamical variable whose eigenstates form a complete set an observable. Thus any quantity that can be measured is an observable.” [1] Here Dirac just summarises the conclusion that the observability of any variable (object) is entirely determined by the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics.
“The set of eigenvalues of a real dynamical variable are just the possible results of measurements of that dynamical variable and the calculation of eigenvalues is for this reason an important problem.” [1] Here we can draw a parallel with Erwin Schrödinger’s words “we are forced to dictate from our desks which measurements should be possible in principle in order to sufficiently support our calculational schemes.” [2]
“We cannot be satisfied with anything less because we have lost our naive-realistic innocence. Only our calculational scheme can indicate where Nature draws the line of ignorance, i.e. what is the best possible knowledge about an object. If not, then our measurement reality would depend on the diligence or laziness of the experimenter, how much effort he makes to get the information. We will have to tell him how far he could get if he were skillful enough. Otherwise, we would have to fear that, wherever we forbid any further investigation, there would in fact be more valuable information to acquire.” [2]
In the above quote Schrödinger refers to measurement reality as an alternative to naive realism — the mental picture in space and time previously mentioned by Dirac. From the point of view of the laws of human perception rather than the laws of physics we can draw a conclusion that secondary and primary components of intelligence have different types of reality.
Schrödinger provides an excellent description of measurement reality of primary intelligence:
“Reality refuses to be copied by a model. One therefore has to relinquish naive realism and rely instead directly on the unquestionable thesis that (for a physicist) reality in the end lies in observation and measurement.” Here we have to replace “for a physicist” by “for primary intelligence” because our secondary intelligence keeps living and being useful in the naively-realistic “mental picture in space and time of the whole scheme.” [1]
He also provides us with some very interesting and important cues about the transitions between the mental picture in space and time and the substrate.
“When two systems, of which we know the states by their respective representatives, enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before, viz. by endowing each of them with a representative of its own. I would not call that yet another but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought. By the interaction the two representatives (or ψ-functions) have become entangled. To disentangle them we must gather further information by experiment, although we knew as much as anybody could possibly know about all that happened. Of either system, taken separately, all previous knowledge may be entirely lost, leaving us but one privilege: to restrict the experiments to one only of the two systems. After reestablishing one representative by observation, the other one can be inferred simultaneously. In what follows the whole of this procedure will be called the disentanglement. Its sinister importance is due to its being involved in every measuring process and therefore forming the basis of the quantum theory of measurement, threatening us thereby with at least a regressus in infinitum, since it will be noticed that the procedure itself involves measurement.” [3]
From the above quote we can see that the reality of primary intelligence is discreet unlike the reality of secondary intelligence that is continuous. The reality of primary intelligence is blinking all the time. With each measurement it first disappears as a result of entanglement and afterwards reappears as a result of disentanglement.
Because at the moment of each blink the state of observable systems changes so does the state of those systems in the reality of secondary intelligence. Secondary intelligence can’t infer from “the mental picture in space and time of the entire scheme” such changes. Those changes can be rather profound. Furthermore, they can be influenced by primary intelligence. In particular, a system to “be steered or piloted into one or the other type of state at the experimenter’s mercy in spite of his having no access to it.” [3] We have to remember that “the experimenter here for us stands for primary intelligence.
In conclusion I want to make the following remarks:
- all new important things appear in our mental picture in space and time only due to primary intelligence. The substrate evolves with time, therefore, natural intelligence always comprises both primary and secondary components;
- there’s no qualitative difference between natural intelligence of a bacterium, a cell of our body or a human being, sophistication depends only on the number of available observables;
- all currently successful models of AI represent secondary intelligence that is much easier to automate than primary intelligence but it’s impossible for it to reach things which don’t exist in our mental picture;
- quantum mechanics of Dirac, Schrödinger and John von Neumann provides us with 99% of the mathematical formalism required to create a model of AI based on both primary and secondary intelligence as it is the case in nature;
- The missing one percent is the most interesting part of the story.
References:
- Dirac, Paul (1930). The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
- Schrödinger, Erwin. The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics, Die Naturwissenschaften 1935. Volume 23, Issue 48.
- Schrödinger, Erwin. Discussion of Probability Relations between Separated Systems. Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 1935;31(4):555–563. doi:10.1017/S0305004100013554
