We currently believe that a principle of intelligence must satisfy the following four properties:
- Generality: A principle of intelligence is one that in accordance with the definition of principle pertains to intelligent behavior. It generalizes in response to different tasks, environments, species, and levels of abstraction.
- Mechanistic behavior generation: A principle of intelligence characterizes the process of producing behavior. This process can be viewed as a computation (Brock, 2024).
- Regularity: A principle captures a regularity, i.e., a reproducible and predictable relationship between the agent’s embodiment, features of the environment, and the behavioral consequences of their interactions. It limits the degrees of freedom in the space in which the solution is to be found and can be viewed as a lower-dimensional manifold in that space. Such a regularity enables robust and general behavior.
- Constructiveness: A principle represents a design guideline for intelligent agents.
