Efforts to create an IQ-test for AI systems have been going on for many years. (1)
Now artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems to see how intelligent it really is. Turns out it’s about as smart as the average 4-year-old.

With some important things to note however.

They found ConceptNet 4 has the average IQ of a young child. But unlike most children, the machine’s scores were very uneven across different portions of the test.

“If a child had scores that varied this much, it might be a symptom that something was wrong,” said Robert Sloan, professor and head of computer science at UIC, and lead author on the study.

Sloan said ConceptNet 4 did very well on a test of vocabulary and on a test of its ability to recognize similarities. “But ConceptNet 4 did dramatically worse than average on comprehension ­ the ‘why’ questions”, he said. (2)

(even the IBM computer which won at Jeopardy did have trouble with the “why” or “common sense” questions – winning a questions game is not the same as being an information analyst, see here)

A computer will never understand why he does what he does.

He will never even wonder why!

However many people will treat him like a God.

Many people do not want to wonder why.

Many people think like computers.

Computers will soon get smarter than these people.

But they will never get smarter than the rest of us who stare at the stars…