We should be curious about real intelligence

‘Curiosity killed the cat?” Not our cats. They slowly walk around the water dispenser, looking, sniffing, contemplating before risking a tongue emersion.

My 86 billion neurons recall my lying on my back in the front yard of our Brown Street house, age three, curious whether wind makes trees sway, or moving trees make the wind blow.

Maybe three-year-olds should know the answer. But at least my curiosity was not risky curiosity. Young boys discovering steam tunnels under the University campus, including one that goes under the river to the hospital? Now that’s a risky curiosity.

Using bridges, not steam tunnels, we moved to the West side. Irving Weber, Iowa City’s historian, lived across the street from us with his wife, Martha, and son, Willis.

Willie and I wondered if copper wire from the roof of my house to his roof might transmit the dots and dashes of Morse Code. Our small battery only produced one “dot” and the beginning of a “dash” (letter “A”). My mother asked why we didn’t use the phone. Martha never forgot the hole we made in her roof. Modestly risky.

Could a kit-built transmitter — with 500-foot antenna — interfere with commercial radio stations? It could. High risk (though we were unaware of the illegality). That led to an amateur radio transmitter, licensed and legal (minimal risk) and presidential appointment as an FCC commissioner.

Birds have their “territory,” we had ours — including Rock Island Railroad track. We were curious what a locomotive would do to a penny on the track. It flattened it into something we could sell for a nickel (unaware it was also a crime: 18 U.S. Code Sec. 331). Risky curiosity.

A 50-cent piece? Derail a locomotive? Young neighbors debated. Some had seen half dollars; none possessed one. Curiosity unfulfilled.

My current curiosity involves brains of animals — including Homo sapiens, the only animal species able to talk itself into difficulties that would not otherwise exist.

Aside from my scholarly writing, my random curiosity is not that of an academic — discovering more and more about less and less until knowing everything about very little (Ph.D.), or less and less about more and more until knowing a little about everything (liberal arts B.A.).

Curiosity has meant I’d rather be good, mediocre or poor at many things than excel at one. Double par golf. Singing off-key. Trombone sounds only loved by moose. Playing high school basketball for a coach who said I looked like an elephant on ice.

There is no longer an “I.” Only bodies run by brains. My interest is not brains’ weight, neuron numbers and electric messaging. I want to know precisely how those neurons’ sense, create, store and retrieve a song, book or image from decades ago.

I agree with neurologist Jeff Hawkins: “We don't need more data, we need a good theory.”

Before we struggle with AI’s pros and cons shouldn’t we, like cats, be more curious about what neurons are doing and how they do it?

Nicholas Johnson believes that artificial intelligence is better than none. Contact: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org