On the Working De nition of Intelligence

This paper is about the philosophical and methodological foundation of arti cial intelligence (AI). After discussing what is a good \working de nition", \intelligence" is de ned as \the ability for an information processing system to adapt to its environment with insu cient knowledge and resources". Applying the de nition to a reasoning system, we get the major components of Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS), which is a symbolic logic implemented in a computer system, and has many interesting properties that are closely related to intelligence. The de nition also clari es the di erence and relationship between AI and other disciplines, such as computer science. Finally, the de nition is compared with other popular de nitions of intelligence, and its advantages are argued. 1 To De ne Intelligence