On Intelligence

Intelligence is no more than a leg muscle. It may be thin and scrawny, but it can still be useful for certain scenarios like piano playing. It may be huge and bulging – useful for sprinting or scrummaging. It may be toned and sinewy – useful for ice-skating or ballet dancing. The fact is that intelligence can be measured, but only against the relevant backcloth. Incorrect measurement is far too easy – so abundant are the numbers of possible backcloths – and this tends to bias. Growing the muscle from a scrawny state is feasible in the young but less easy in adults. Some are more predisposed to muscle growth than others. The right nourishment, environment and exercise are key to the growth, tone and flexibility of the muscle.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Sir Stephen Hawking

Sir Stephen Hawking was a ‘genius’ theoretical physicist and cosmologist, but he would have been a terrible rugby player. Stevie Wonder is a ‘genius’ musician, but one would imagine his golf is not up to much. Polyglots may well speak several languages, but they will always feel more comfortable speaking in one tongue. Was the creation of the ‘genius’ detective Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest achievement, or was it introducing skiing to Switzerland in 1893? Pinning down a definition of intelligence or determining classifications of backcloth against which to judge intelligence are frankly as pointless as atheism.

“Quickness of understanding” is as sound a definition as is required for intelligence – it avoids losing one’s boot in the quagmire of linguistics, and dodges dipping one’s toe into the eugenicists’ bloodbath. Slow people are rarely intelligent while fast people are rarely slow-witted. Witty people rarely deliver their wit slowly. Genius offspring have been born to some very dim souls.

Is the active intellect a power external to the human mind?

Inspiration seems to come from a part of the human brain that is receptive to the other. Those who have taken LSD and seen the actual waves of music. Those who have experienced Damascene conversions. Those mothers who have felt the death of their child before being informed of it. Twins who both feel their skin burned when only one has been sunbathing. It takes a photon forty thousand years to get from the centre of the Sun to its surface, but only just over eight minutes to get from there to the Earth, so how long does it take for the light of intelligence to rebound? For are we not data vessels of photons, like crawlers of the Universe, having on our person multiple intelligences but in varying sizes and complexities as to all be individuals, or potential individuals? Intelligence is never constant – a genius is as prone to dementia as the next man or woman, but perhaps by that stage their experience has been uploaded to the ever-learning memory of the Universe, and what remains of their person is more of a shell?

I understand therefore I am – is appropriate. It is a sensible measure of when to turn off a life support machine. Even the dimmest human understands – they do not necessarily think. The brightest humans think radiantly, but that does not mean that they possess the emotional intelligence to court a lover or convey love to their mother. Intelligence is thus an umbrella that protects some from the rain and some from the sun. Others, eccentrics like Digby Tatham-Warter, are less predictable and charge German armoured cars with their umbrella.

Positron emission is correlated with intelligence. Neuroscientists now possess advanced tools capable of generating images and monitoring the activity of living, functioning brains. Among the most prominent are PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans and fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). These techniques, which have become widespread over the past twenty-five years, have profoundly transformed our comprehension of brain function. In PET scans, a biologically active radioactive tracer, typically a form of glucose for brain imaging, is administered to the subject. As the brain metabolises the tracer, it emits positrons. The intensity of positron emission correlates with the level of activity in the brain structure being examined. Sensors detect the positrons through gamma radiation and then a computer can construct a three-dimensional representation of brain activity based on tracer concentrations.

Two mental patients suffering from schizophrenia give off plenty of positrons but only one is a concert pianist who knows the Iliad off by heart. Despite the positron-intelligence correlation, humans are still exploring the brain thus still exploring measurement of intelligence. Capturing genius in real-time still seems improbable (although I trust that Salah will knock one in against United on Sunday, and be filmed doing so). Still, determining the axis for measurement of intelligence seems perpetually elusive.

There are crows in the Pacific Islands which are said to be as intelligent and innovative as seven-year-old humans. Besides primates, they are the only other species who have learned how to make tools. They use sticks and hook shaped objects to dig out insects. Have no doubt that animals develop intelligence too. Watch how a dog understands and strategises. Watch how a cat stands ready to catch its prey, then weighs up leaving the hunt when human offers of Whiskas are presented to it. Of course, developing intelligence does not always give entities’ sentience or rights.

Meanwhile artificial intelligence could be humans’ warning to get off earth’s stage – it also could not. Scientists are today developing AIs that excel in specific areas of intelligence, just as we humans are narrowly intelligent. Winning at chess, cleaning a swimming pool and recognising human speech are “narrow” Ais, but they already exhibit superhuman capabilities. Superintelligent AI and AGI will, likely inevitably, combine a wide range of skills in one entity. More darkly, the first iterations already use data generated by mobile-phone-toting humans to excel at social manipulation.

Superintelligence could lead to an explosion or breakout of AI that could threaten human existence – superhuman AIs could take our place on the evolutionary ladder, and dominate humans the way we now dominate animals. Or, worse yet, they may seek to release a pandemic on humans that will exterminate us. Human G factors will inevitably be faced with X risks. Although AIs will not develop human urges and values, humanity’s only hope is building friendly AIs, ensuring the machines of tomorrow will not wipe us out in their quest to attain their goals, hoping humans will not yoke AI in some form of hybrid horror to manifest some kind of nastiness worse even than that of humans like Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot unveiled in the past.

Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine.

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