Beyond mimicry: a framework for evaluating genuine intelligence in artificial systems.
Frontiers in artificial intelligence January 1, 2025 Sarfaraz K Niazi
A new evaluation framework, the Machine Perturbational Complexity & Agency Battery (mPCAB), shifts AI assessment from task performance to the cognitive processes underlying human-like understanding. It applies neurophysiological methods originally used to assess consciousness, incorporating perturbational complexity, global workspace assessment, norm internalization, and agency to compare digital, neuromorphic, and biological substrates. The framework addresses gaps in long-term reasoning, norm internalization under distribution shifts, and transformational creativity involving meta-cognitive rule modification. By analyzing theories of consciousness and mapping human cognitive functions to computational counterparts, it provides design principles. Pilot studies show feasibility across substrates and comparable metrics, moving evaluation toward mechanism-based assessment for developing mind-like machines.