Making Sense with Sam Harris #116 - AI: Racing Toward the Brink (with El...

Comment:  I think one can simplify from ability to accomplish goals, to incomplete pattern or partial pattern completion, which is pretty much the same.

Everything is a pattern spatial or temporal, but real world is spatiotemporal.  That is all that enters the brain spatiotemporal patterns.  Complete the higher pattern, and it is the source of the smaller patterns, the cause or object or thing producing the action or phenomena observed.  Potentially a population of interconnected partial spatiotemporal pattern detectors |completers|predictors would have a sort of collective intelligence higher than any of the component partial pattern detector|completers.

If you can detect and complete arbitrary patterns, you can complete the goal to which the pattern leads.  A sequence of action leading to a particular goal, is but a pattern that produces obtaining what is sought, or accomplishes the goal.

Partial pattern detector|completer|predictor can be seen as a modified pattern detector|completer that also responds to portions or fragments of the pattern it detects with some level of activity, activity that can potentially affect other portions of the system.