
The Bongard Problems - vardhanw
http://www.foundalis.com/res/diss_research.html
======
rdtsc
This is very neat. Besides this site and these results (updated till 2006):

[http://www.foundalis.com/res/solvprog.htm](http://www.foundalis.com/res/solvprog.htm)

Anyone know if since then, say using deep learning or other newer methods,
these problems are solvable easier?

I like the idea behind this, perhaps being able to solve these would be a
stepping stone before solving the Turing test. And I think this kind of stuff
points to developing a general AI.

The background of this is very interesting. The author of this research has
stopped working on the problem for ethical reasons:

[http://www.foundalis.com/soc/why_no_more_Bongard.html](http://www.foundalis.com/soc/why_no_more_Bongard.html)

"If this is achieved, eventually intelligent weapons of mass destruction will
be built, without doubt. That’s what I would like to explain below."

I don't want to comment on that or qualify it in any way (I do have some
thoughts about it, but would rather not share them). Will just say it was an
interesting find.

Also learned about Mikhail Bongard, a Soviet machine learning researcher from
the 60s-70s --
[http://www.foundalis.com/res/Mikhail_Moiseevich_Bongard.html](http://www.foundalis.com/res/Mikhail_Moiseevich_Bongard.html)
for some reason I imagined that part of the world simply did not have any
background or interest in that discipline at that time, so it is interesting
to learn something new there too.

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vardhanw
The OP is about the authors research into the BPs as a means to reason about
cognition. Originated by the russian scientist in 1967 and used and expanded
by D. Hofstaedter in GEB. Here's [1] an index to all the BPs till now, and
here's [2] the authors ideas on cognition which were developed in his
research. Interesting that the research was abandoned [3] earlier based on
ethical concerns of the possible misuse of AI. There is also a programmatic
implementation of a BP solver.

[Edit]* this comment was not posted for a while, there is already another one
with similar and more details now.

[1]
[http://www.foundalis.com/res/bps/bpidx.htm](http://www.foundalis.com/res/bps/bpidx.htm)

[2]
[http://www.foundalis.com/res/poc/PrinciplesOfCognition.htm](http://www.foundalis.com/res/poc/PrinciplesOfCognition.htm)

[3]
[http://www.foundalis.com/soc/why_no_more_Bongard.html](http://www.foundalis.com/soc/why_no_more_Bongard.html)

------
fernly
Boy does this make me feel stupid. Pattern puzzles in IQ tests are always the
hardest for me. The first, "trivial" example stumped me...

~~~
aaronharnly
It's easier than you think -- the problem is to find a characteristic or rule
that all of the lefthand objects conform to, and that all of the righthand
objects do not.

The problem is _not_ (as is sometimes the case for similar-looking IQ test
problems) to find a rule that transforms the left side of each pair into the
right side, or that generates the whole sequence of six iteratively. That
might have been what you were searching for; I tried to do so in vain before
reassessing the problem!

------
numlocked
Is the "hard" one that the shapes on the left all have >=50% of their sides as
single, straight lines? I've never die these types of problems before so
totally unsure if I stumbled on an answer quickly, or don't understand what
defines a solution.

~~~
thaumasiotes
No, since the bottom left example has 7 sides of which only 3 are single
straight lines and the top right counterexample has 7 sides of which 4 are
single straight lines.

The rule is that the shapes on the left all have _exactly three_ sides as
single straight lines. (Similarly, the shapes on the right have exactly three
"unusual" sides.)

That said, though I've referred to "the rule" and the post author also refers
to "the solution" to a Bongard problem, they don't and can't have
authoritative solutions, just as sequence completion problems can't. When we
talk about "correct" answers to this style of question, what we mean is "what
tends to occur to smart people".

~~~
taneq
That's my issue with this kind of problem. There are usually a bunch of viable
solutions with little if anything to differentiate them.

They're not tests of intelligence so much as tests of how similar your pattern
matching is to that of the test authors.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> They're not tests of intelligence so much as tests of how similar your
> pattern matching is to that of the test authors.

Well... they are tests of intelligence. A valid test of intelligence is one
that lets you determine ("predict") the intelligence of a testee from their
answers. For that, you need intelligent and unintelligent people to have
measurably different answer patterns, but there is no requirement that the
intelligent answer patterns be objectively _correct_. You could have a test
that was entirely subjective ("Who was the better artist, Michelangelo or
Jackson Pollock?") and still use it to predict intelligence[1].

[1] That's an invented example; I'm not claiming that the particular question
of Michelangelo vs. Jackson Pollock is actually predictive of intelligence,
just pointing out that it could be.

~~~
taneq
But how do you select 'intelligent' people to generate your 'intelligent'
answers? If it's not at some point tied back to some kind of objective
performance (generating correct answers) then you're not measuring
intelligence.

~~~
jldugger
These are not intelligence tests, they're cognition tests. The goal is not to
seek _the_ correct answer, but _a_ correct answer.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Seeking _a_ correct answer is trivially easy, though; you can always find the
rule "any of the six shapes on the left", just as you can always fit a
function to any arbitrary sequence.

~~~
jldugger
Right, but the context is that these problems comprise an evaluation suite for
artificial intelligences. Even simply textually describing the shapes on the
left and the right, is an accomplishment.

A better test suite would likely provide an oracle capable of generating new
images belonging to the left or right and asking the program to judge which
side it belongs to.

------
00098345
Interesting tidbit: The author's PhD advisor is the author of the celebrated
text "Godel, Escher, Bach".

