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The Decomposition of Intelligence

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AI may separate capabilities that human cognition tightly integrates.

Broad AI ability may not be organized the way human intelligence is.

AI may reveal that our definition of intelligence is too human.

Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about an idea called anti-intelligence. In this post, I wasn't suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) was unintelligent or that it resulted in some adverse impact on human thinking. I was trying to describe a process that felt, at least to me, upside down or inverted. While AI could generate smart language and solve tough problems, it accomplished this without the qualities we associate with a human mind. At the core of my idea was that AI's output looked familiar, but its computational process didn't. In many ways, AI's computation—a stateless, pattern-based, and high-dimensional construct—was weird, disconnected, and perhaps even "alien" as some today suggest.

At that time, I saw anti-intelligence as a way of describing the differences between human intelligence and AI's techno-computation. In a word, it was different. Not better or worse, but fundamentally different. Human thought comes from a life shaped by our lived experiences. AI seemed to reproduce many of the artifacts of our cognition, but without a process that came close to being human.

I think that's still true. But I've started to wonder if anti-intelligence was revealing something more,........

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