How intelligent is a general AI after the singularity?

An interesting question is how intelligent a General AI can become? That really depends on the definition of intelligence. There is one component that signifies intelligence, and that is speed. If I would be 10 times as quick to learn new things and reach conculsions, then most would consider me as more intelligent. But is speed really all there is?

A popular comparison is to compare the human intellect with monkeys. There are problems that humans can eaily solve, but monkeys can't solve no matter how many that are working at it. So there is some major difference between the human intellect and the monkey intellect, which is not just a difference of speed.

Will we be able to construct, or at least boot-strap, a general AI that can optimize itself so that it becomes both quicker but also have that extra ability? I think it will be almost impossible to get it already from the beginning, as humans don't know what the difference is. Only way to find out about it (for the AI) would be to develop it during it's own optimization.

Can we know if there is another level of intelligence that we don't know about?

Instead of looking at the difference between a monkey and a human, let's look at the difference between a genius and an average human. In this case, is the difference only a matter of speed? Most would say that the genius can come up with ideas and solutions that an average human wouldn't find, no matter how much time was allowed. I think a genius is characterized by two things:

1. A capacity to quicker understand certain areas than the human average.
2. A capacity to find unexpected relations the average human would not have thought about.

The first one is obviously about speed. The second is about looking for relations in areas that normally would not be considered as worth looking at. It is some kind of trial-and-error process. I think this is also really just a matter of speed, where the average human knows the he/she don'thave enough time to investigate unlikely possibilities.

Recipe to create a General AI in your PC

This is a recipe on how to create a General Artificial Intelligence. Each though it looks simple, each step below is far from trivial.
Version: 1.1, July 25, 2007.

Learning
Create a software that can learn, and then teach it something.

Answering
Change the software in such a way that it can provide answers to questions, or more generally, produce response to stimuli.

We now have a passive system that may impress people with the possibility to understand questions and give answers. But it will not be considered as a General AI, and even less be as being conscious. And it will probably be slow.

Consciousness
How do we make the program conscious? It is a problem as consciousness isn't well defined. One way to start is to add a goal (motivation, driving force) and allow the program to:

1. Execute without having been asked to.
2. Pose questions to itself on how to fulfill the stated goal.
3. Act according to the answers.

This program has a higher probability of being regarded as conscious, but probably not sapient. The question is then to find a good goal.

Human driving force
How about defining a goal similar to the human driving force? This has been developed over millions of years, and was originally and basically to spread your genes. That in turn has lead to derived goals, like behaving socially. It is questionable whether such a basic goal is desired for our general AI. We don't want it to multiply on the expense of competitors (like humans).

A more interesting goal is something with which we can sympathize as well as utilize. The steps outlined above are far from simple. I have the feeling that defining a good goal can be the hardest of them all.

Environment

Enable the program to interact with the environment, analyze the result of that interaction, and then learn from it. That is the final step that will allow the program to really improve, and that is where we may hope to see development in areas that could not be predicted.