Designing an IQ Test for Aliens Is Tough

Given all this talk about the potential discovery of intelligent aliens among the large number of exoplanets awaiting discovery, experts figured out that they have no scientific method towards determining the IQ level of an extraterrestrial. A research team is now at work to fix this issue.

The investigators, based in Spain and Australia, believe that they are able to come up with an answer to this question by taking a logical approach to things. They say that the method may soon be used on humans, animals, machines and even aliens.

Efforts to develop this assessment techniques are led by Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) researcher José Hernández-Orallo and fellow scientist David L. Dowe, who is based at the Monash University in Clayton, Australia.

Mathematical and computational concepts are at the core of the new method, the team reveals, given the large number of factors that need to be taken into account when determining IQ levels.

“We have developed an 'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out,” Hernández-Orallo tells SINC.

“It can be applied to any subject – whether biological or not – at any point in its development (child or adult, for example), for any system now or in the future, and with any level of intelligence or speed,” he goes on to say.

This work is a part of the larger, “Anytime Universal Intelligence” project, which also involves researchers from the UPV and the Complutense University of Madrid.

The method revolves around analyzing the “Kolmogorov complexity” of a subject, which basically means it calculates the number of computational resources needed to describe an object or a piece of information.

This approach is different from commonly-used Turing tests, which are the traditional psychometric tests and artificial intelligence tests, Daily Galaxy reports.

Until now, detecting whether inanimate systems are more intelligent than ones produced 10 to 20 years ago was impossible, “"but the existence of tests with these characteristics may make it possible to systematically evaluate the progress of” artificial intelligence, says Hernández-Orallo.

“The universal and unified evaluation of intelligence, be it human, non-human animal, artificial or extraterrestrial, has not been approached from a scientific viewpoint before, and this is a first step,” the investigators say.