A.I. and Multiple Intelligences
Part 1: The Many Ways of Being Intelligent
How do we define “Intelligence”?
One definition is to say intelligence is the ability to think in abstract terms. This is what separates us from animals. Polar bears, walruses, otters and other mammals have a marvellous ability to survive in their habitat. However, “intelligent” isn’t a word that leaps to mind when we describe them. It is humans who have the ability to think in abstract terms — to use metaphors, to devise calculus, to convert music to notes, to associate colour with emotions, to use logic, to think about thinking, to moralise, to contemplate eternity, and so on.
Another definition is to say intelligence is what the intelligence tests test: Most people associate intelligence with IQ test scores. IQ tests focus mainly on language and logical-mathematical skills.
Howard Gardner is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University. He is best known for his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which he proposed in 1983 to analyse and better describe the concept of intelligence. His theory also addresses the question whether traditional IQ tests are truly reliable indicators of intelligence.
Howard Gardner says, “Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one’s own culture.”
Intelligence and its value varies from culture to culture. A New York stockbroker would be considered supremely intelligent in his urban world. An Amazonian Indian would perform poorly on an IQ test. But that doesn’t mean the Amazonian tribesman is not intelligent. He shows an excellent understanding of his habitat: he knows which plants to avoid, how to deal with poisonous bites, how to make spears and hunt… this knowledge would make him intelligent in his world. The NY stockbroker’s urban intelligence is of little use to him in the Amazonian habitat.
Thus, intelligence may be considered the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one’s own culture.
Multiple Intelligences
The theory of multiple intelligences suggests that there are a number of distinct forms of intelligence that each individual possesses in varying degrees. There are different ways of being intelligent. In its essence, Multiple Intelligences considers the ability to sing and dance, to play music and sports, to sympathise and empathise, to reflect and introspect, to role-play and emote… all as different ways of being intelligent.
(Prodigies and savants are individuals who are exceptionally gifted in one intelligence — whether it is music or art or Mathematics or memory recall.)
Gardner’s pluralistic view of intelligence suggests that all people possess at least eight different intelligences that operate in varying degrees, depending upon each individual:
Linguistic intelligence (“word smart”)
Logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart”)
Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”)
Bodily-Kinaesthetic intelligence (“body smart”)
Musical intelligence (“music smart”)
Interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”)
Intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”)
Naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”)
The eight intelligences weren’t pulled out willy-nilly from a hat. Gardner used the following eight criteria to codify the intelligences:
· Identifiable cerebral systems
· Evolutionary history and plausibility
· Identifiable core operation or set of operations
· Meaning that can be encoded in a symbol system
· A distinct developmental history and mastery or “expert” levels
· Existence of savants, prodigies and exceptional people
· Evidence from experimental psychological tasks
· Psychometric findings
For too long, parents and educators have focused their attention only on linguistic and mathematical skills. The child good at football, or art, or the guitar was considered talented, but not necessarily intelligent. The Theory of Multiple intelligences allows for a broader understanding of the word “intelligent.”
MI theory is not a theory of exclusion but of inclusion. The average person will possess all the eight intelligences — but in varying degrees. A person may not be able to read but that doesn’t mean they don’t have linguistic intelligence. They may be an excellent storyteller, for instance.
Most people can develop each intelligence to an adequate level of competence. Not everyone is an author — but they can certainly read and write. Not everyone can play a musical instrument, but they can hum a tune. Not everyone may be good at Maths, but they know how much change they should expect at the supermarket.
Intelligences are complex
Intelligences work together in complex ways. An actor uses not just bodily-kinaesthetic skills when he acts, but linguistic skills when he reads and recites his lines, intrapersonal skills to gauge the effectiveness of his performance, interpersonal skills to be able to empathise with his role and character.
When a child tells a lie, for instance, they use a whole range of intelligences: they obviously use linguistic intelligence when they speak. However, they also use bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence to make their gestures and facial expressions seem believable. They use interpersonal skills to judge how their teacher is responding to their lie and thus modify their words accordingly. They use intrapersonal intelligence to keep track of the sequence of their lies and why they are doing it and how far they can go on and to decide what they hope to get out of the lie.
There are many ways to be intelligent within each category: Linguistic intelligence involves speaking, reading, and writing abilities. Musical Intelligences involves being able to sing, play an instrument, tell if a song is off-key, whistle, hum a tune, keep beats, or identify different notes.
Pure Intelligence
A pure intelligence is rarely seen. A person with only one intelligence might be considered autistic and wouldn’t be able to function in the normal world. (There are people who can do fantastic calculations in their head but couldn’t tell you what day it is or wouldn’t know how to cross a street.)
Gardner’s theory is extremely important for the future of education. It is important to realise that each person possesses all intelligences and the education system should be catering to all the varied intelligences in the class? Why? — Because “Intelligence is the ability to find and solve problems and create products of value in one’s own culture.”
In his book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner points out that “in contrast to IQ scores and labels such as smart, average, or dumb, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences enables educators to look at the diverse ways children problem solve and apply what they have learned.” He also emphasises that different areas of the brain work in complex ways and in concert to help students solve problems or figure out solutions.
Artificial Intelligence and Multiple Intelligence
Young people today are being educated for jobs that don’t exist. They will be using technology that hasn’t been invented and will have to solve problems that haven’t yet emerged. We live in a world of accelerating change. We are increasingly being surrounded by exponential technologies and ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence. Whatever can be automated and outsourced, will be automated and outsourced. Whatever can be done by AI will be done by AI.
In fact, many of the skills and competencies we thought were once considered uniquely human are now being done by Artificial Intelligence. Below is a quick overview of how AI is mastering the various intelligences.
People with high verbal-linguistic intelligence display a facility with words and languages. We currently have AI that can write stories, news reports, and screenplay scripts. IBM Watson is a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It beat the best human champions in the quiz show Jeopardy. What is not generally appreciated is that Watson’s knowledge was not hand-coded by engineers. Watson got it by reading Wikipedia — all 200 million pages of it.
Musical intelligence has to do with sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music. We used to think creating music was a uniquely human skill. We currently have Deep Learning systems composing music. AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) is a system that composes music for films. It recently released “Genesis,” its first album, and has officially become the first AI to acquire the worldwide status of Composer. It has even been registered under the France and Luxembourg authors’ right society (SACEM), and its work is copyrighted in its own name. The title track from the album is sublime and deeply moving. To think that a non-human could create something this powerful and emotionally moving is hard to believe. You have to hear it to believe it. And once you do, it will shake you to the core.
Over in China, Baidu is the largest search engine. Their Baidu AI Composer is now using the world’s largest neural network to compose original music inspired by art. Using image recognition software the system scans various images of art and identifies various elements of the painting: objects, colours, setting etc. Analysing tags that people have used for each painting, the system can also associate tone and mood with each painting. Baidu’s Deep Learning system then connects with a database of musical compositions that are divided up into musical units and itemised based on the moods and emotions they evoke. The AI Composer system then reinterprets the elements of the image as a series of notes, fits together bits of music based on the mood of the image, and ultimately creates a unique and original melody.
Visuospatial intelligence deals with spatial judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind’s eye. We used to think only humans could create art. When we gaze upon the cave paintings in Lascaux, we are profoundly moved by the humanity of it. However, today, Google’s Deep Dream system can create art. It is a program that adjusts an image to stimulate the pattern recognition capabilities of a deep neural network. By running the image recognition programme backwards, Deep Dream was able to generate phantasmagoric pagodas, psychedelic dogs, alien-looking plants and so on — images that looked haunting and hallucinatory and not a little disconcerting when we realise that no human had programmed these systems to create art and we had little idea how the system was doing it.
Prisma is a photo-editing application that utilizes a neural network and artificial intelligence to transform images into a range of artistic styles and effects: Picasso, Munch, Van Gogh, Chagall etc.
Kinaesthetic intelligence involves the control of one’s bodily motions and the capacity to handle objects skillfully. Robots and machines have been doing this for decades. However, we now have a new generation of robots that come in a wide range of forms and can do remarkable things. We have robots that can swim like an octopus, glide like a snake, fly like an insect, walk like a dog, run like a human, and even do precision surgery. In fact, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot can even do somersaults and backflips.
This intelligence involves the ability to interact with other people. There are many examples of AI exhibiting this intelligence today. Siri, Google Now, and Cortana are all smart agents or intelligent digital personal assistants on various platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile). Their primary ability is to understand human speech and retrieve relevant information. That may soon be commonplace, but if we stop and think about it, it is a remarkable achievement to have a conversation with a non-human as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Right now, much of the conversation is restricted to factual information, like ‘Siri, where’s the nearest petrol station?” or “how far is New York?” However, in the very near future, these smart agents will be able to have much deeper and existential conversations with their owners. Even now, these smart agents are constantly learning more about the habits and behaviours of their owners. Soon, they will start to anticipate our needs and be far more effective in their interactions with humans.
Mathematical intelligence has to do with logic, abstractions, reasoning, numbers, and the capacity to understand the underlying principles causal systems. Forty years ago, a calculator was a cutting-edge example of an AI. Today we’re not impressed. In the late 1990s, IBM Deep Blue’s victory over Gary Kasparov at chess left us amazed. Today, we’re not impressed. In October 2015, AlphaGo became the first computer Go program to beat a human professional Go player without handicaps on a full-sized 19×19 board. AlphaGo uses a Monte Carlo tree search algorithm to find its moves based on knowledge acquired through machine learning and using artificial neural networks.
Some sceptics say many of the current examples of AI are nothing more than very sophisticated algorithms. But the rebuttal to that is if these systems have the ability to solve problems in creative ways, then they are certainly manifesting some degree of intelligence.
So far, we have considered the Multiple Intelligences that A.I. is capable of imitating. However, there are still three Intelligences identified by Gardner that A.I. still hasn’t been able to master. These are Existential Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, and Pedagogical Intelligence. Ironically, these are also the three intelligences that are least catered to in schools. As we move into the future, these three intelligences will have increasing significance in a world of ubiquitous automation and artificial intelligence. We explore this in part 2.
Part 1: The Many Ways of Being Intelligent
