What Is Intelligence?

Overview

We assume intelligence is what humans have. But what if intelligence is far more common—and far stranger—than we thought?

Drawing on Blaise Agüera y Arcas' radical ideas about life as computation, this lecture expands your view of what intelligence can be and where it exists.

What We'll Cover

Computation as Foundation

What if the same principles that make computers work also underlie life itself? We'll explore the deep connection between computation and biology.

Evolution as Intelligence

Natural selection solves problems, learns from feedback, and creates increasingly sophisticated solutions. Is evolution itself a form of intelligence?

Other Minds

Octopuses with distributed brains. Crows that make and use tools. Plants that communicate and make decisions. Slime molds that solve mazes. Intelligence takes forms we barely recognize.

AI on the Intelligence Spectrum

If intelligence exists on a continuum, where do AI systems fit? What does "artificial" even mean?

Questions We'll Explore

• Is AI "truly" intelligent or just sophisticated mimicry?
• Can plants and animals be intelligent? In what sense?
• What makes human intelligence different—if anything?
• Does consciousness require a brain?
• Are we already in a "major evolutionary transition"?

Based On

This lecture draws heavily on What Is Intelligence? by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, freely available at whatisintelligence.antikythera.org.

We'll explore the key ideas from the book and discuss their implications for how we think about AI, consciousness, and ourselves.