How to define Intelligence ?

Intelligence does not exist ! What a punch line for what people consider the essence of Humans. How do we challenge such a statement ? Is Intelligence one of the pillars of our foundations ? The one we used to design our societies, achieving progress over the ages, and defining skilled people through our educational systems ?

Is this so far from the reality ? While we intend to develop Artificial Intelligence, it makes sense to understand what we mean and be clear that we all understand the same thing. This should aid in reaching a better outcome.

First, when we talk about Intelligence, what difference does it mean compared to the brain, ability, mind, smartness, and other words used to described either someone’s skills or capabilities. The complexity is coming from the fact that unlike the brain, we cannot touch it. However, we can evaluate the results, without even understanding the process used to achieve it. All these words are affected by our cognitive bias making us think they all means the same. We then, use Intelligence to describe someone who is brilliant. We use Intelligence to select the most suitable student to succeed. Or it could be the opposite. As they succeed, we call them intelligent and do consider this as a granted ability which will help to achieve anything we want.

In this article, you will notice that we often tend to place things into boxes, to simplify too much to ease understanding, knowing this is more complex. We will try to have a stronger focus, on both what Intelligence is and see its potential developments. This should help to mitigate both our expectations and fears about Artificial Intelligence by targeting an efficient usage to help us to invest our time in what really matter for each of us.

Using our “so called” Intelligence every day, both in professional and personal life, working, developing or selling Artificial Intelligence based systems, it could be interesting to take a moment and consider or even re-consider the different processes involved. We may discover something great which light up our future behaviors.