Stochastic Intelligence

OK. Let’s do this. I will try my best to keep up this blog that will be a place for me to lay out my thoughts on technology, AI, medicine, science, academia, etc. After more than two decades in academia, I think I have something to say, beyond my technical publications and in the public domain. If you are a student, researcher, academic, or anyone who is interested in the aforementioned topics, I’m hoping that you will find these pages interesting/useful/etc. I’m sure it will take some time to develop my voice. I’m also sure that much of what I will post will turn out to be wrong, incomplete or misleading. I’ll try my best to correct course as I change my mind – that is what scientists are supposed to do! Transparency is something I strongly believe in, and I also don’t think we should all agree on everything. In fact, contrary to popular belief, I think that inconsistencies and shape-shifting are hallmarks of intelligence. As I wrote in a technical pre-print years ago, stochasticity (or randomness), in my mind, is a crucial ingredient of intelligence. An animal, or an artificial system that always behaves the same way under the same conditions cannot, therefore, be intelligent. There is irreducible (aleotoric) uncertainty about the world and the environment is constantly changing. Adaptation requires rolling the dice, every now and then. And that’s why I decided to call this site “Stochastic Intelligence.” Also to suggest that my posts will have a lot of randomness (timing, content, etc.) which I hope you will find interesting. Let’s see how it goes.

-mert