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Smart

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Term: Smart

Typical definition example: having or showing a quick-witted intelligence

Proposed Definition: Accurately predicting or recognizing the limitations in a problem

 The typical definition of 'smart' is basically just "intelligent", or sometimes just "intelligent, but quickly". However the way the word is used it doesn't seem like most people mean intelligent, for example it's possible to say someone is intelligent but isn't being very smart. I think there is something to the idea that it involves quick responses though.

Being able to predict or recognize limitations has a lot of impacts that would lead to the kind of behavior we call being smart. Even someone who isn't thought of as intelligent could be viewed as being smart in domains where they have experience or an instinct for certain kinds of problems. If you can recognize limitations and constraints then you're not going to waste your time with trying to figure out impossible solutions, also it will be obvious when a potential answer isn't possible and therefore many mistakes can be avoided.

In any problem solving situation the most likely limitation is probably the person trying to solve the problem. There are many problems that are simply beyond any one individual's ability to solve, and recognizing this and giving up (or getting help, etc.) is undoubtedly the smart thing to do. There's lots of cases where someone who's very intelligent tries to solve a problem, but wildly misjudges either their own limitations or the limitations of the problem and isn't seen as being smart. An interesting example is Fermat's Last Theorem. The problem was eventually solved after hundreds of years of attempts, but the way it was solved was very different than the assumptions about the kind of solution the problem would have. Fermat originally made a few notes without providing a proof, and then many mathematicians over centuries tried to solve it unsuccessfully before the theorem was finally solved through years of dedicated work in secret. This gives three very different views of how smart and intelligent the people involved were:


  • Fermat undoubtedly was very intelligent, but for the way he approached this problem it's not clear if he handled it smartly or not? If he really did have a simple proof then he was incredibly intelligent and smart, but if he missed some limitation and assumed there was a simple proof then he was intelligent, but not smart in this case.
  • Many mathematicians thought the problem was impossible. They were intelligent enough to understand the problem and the complexity of the kinds of solutions that could be sought, but misjudged the limitations of the problem, ie. their prediction wasn't smart.
  • Andrew Wiles eventually proved the theorem, but it wasn't the kind of brilliant insight of intelligence that some people though Fermat originally had, instead it was years of diligent hard work. He was intelligent enough to tackle the incredibly complex problems, but what really stands out is that he was smart enough to see that the theorem likely had a solution and that it was a solution he could prove with enough work.

When we look at attempts at machine intelligence, it's this last kind of 'smarts' that seems to be missing. A machine will try to solve an impossible problem forever, or miss incredibly simple constraints that would let it solve seemingly difficult problems easily. The kinds of machine intelligences we have today don't have any idea of their own limitations, so we have to carefully curate the kinds of problems we give them and the way we present those problems because they're not smart enough to know when to give up or try something different. 
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