Intelligence: Many definitions

Despite a long history of research and debate, there is still no standard definition of intelligence. This has lead some to believe that intelligence may be approximately described, but cannot be fully defined. We believe that this degree of pessimism is too strong. Although there is no single standard definition, if one surveys the many definitions that have been proposed, strong similarities between many of the definitions quickly become obvious. In many cases different definitions, suitably interpreted, actually say the same thing but in different words. This observation lead us to believe that a single general and encompassing definition for arbitrary systems was possible. Indeed we have constructed a formal definition of intelligence, called universal intelligence [20], which has strong connections to the theory of optimal learning agents [18]. Rather than exploring very general formal definitions of intelligence, here we will instead take the opportunity to present the many informal definitions that we have collected over the years. Naturally, compiling a complete list would be impossible as many definitions of intelligence are buried deep inside articles and books. Nevertheless, the 55 definitions presented below are, to the best of our knowledge, the largest and most well referenced collection there is. We continue to add to this collect as we discover further definitions, and keep the most up to date version of the collection available online [21]. If you know of additional definitions that we could add, please send us an email. The definitions are grouped into three sections. Firstly, we present definitions that have been proposed by groups or organisations. The next section contains definitions from psychologists. The final section lists definitions from