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What Is Intelligence?
Intelligence is not consciousness, creativity, or learning
There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence these days, some of it much confused, so it’s worthwhile asking what intelligence is in the first place. We can begin by saying it’s not consciousness, creativity, or learning with which it’s often conflated.
At the core of intelligence is the ability to spontaneously create and engage in novel behaviors in novel circumstances to get things done.
As a counter-example, consider a certain species of mud-daubing wasp which builds its adobe abode exactly the same way every time, by rote, a bit like a 3D printer. If a nest is shortened by damage during construction, this unfortunate wasp will keep carrying out the routine where it left off until the nest is “finished” but useless. That particular wasp may be intelligent in other ways, but not when it comes to nest construction.
It’s critical to note that these critters would not become intelligent builders if they learned to rewind their routine to an earlier setpoint, or even if they somehow were born knowing everything that could possibly go wrong and the corresponding solutions. Intelligence uses invention to navigate the unanticipated, even the unanticipatable.
