# AI-as-exploration: Navigating intelligence space

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07964 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07964/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02311/) (2022)
- [Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05262/) (2022)
- [Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12712/) (2023)
- [ImageNet-trained CNNs are biased towards texture; increasing shape bias improves accuracy and robustness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12231/) (2018)
- [In-context Learning and Induction Heads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11895/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning in Neural Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.7828/) (2014)
- [Transformers learn in-context by gradient descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07677/) (2022)
- [What learning algorithm is in-context learning? Investigations with linear models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15661/) (2022)
- [Faith and Fate: Limits of Transformers on Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18654/) (2023)
- [Reasoning or Reciting? Exploring the Capabilities and Limitations of Language Models Through Counterfactual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02477/) (2023)
- [Embers of Autoregression: Understanding Large Language Models Through the Problem They are Trained to Solve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13638/) (2023)
- [What In-Context Learning "Learns" In-Context: Disentangling Task Recognition and Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09731/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Cognitive Maps and Planning in Large Language Models with CogEval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15129/) (2023)
- [Word meaning in minds and machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01766/) (2020)
- [The Vector Grounding Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01481/) (2023)
- [A Philosophical Introduction to Language Models -- Part I: Continuity With Classic Debates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03910/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial Intelligence is a field that lives many lives, and the term has come to encompass a motley collection of scientific and commercial endeavours. In this paper, I articulate the contours of a rather neglected but central scientific role that AI has to play, which I dub `AI-as-exploration'.The basic thrust of AI-as-exploration is that of creating and studying systems that can reveal candidate building blocks of intelligence that may differ from the forms of human and animal intelligence we are familiar with. In other words, I suggest that AI is one of the best tools we have for exploring intelligence space, namely the space of possible intelligent systems. I illustrate the value of AI-as-exploration by focusing on a specific case study, i.e., recent work on the capacity to combine novel and invented concepts in humans and Large Language Models. I show that the latter, despite showing human-level accuracy in such a task, probably solve it in ways radically different, but no less relevant to intelligence research, to those hypothesised for humans.