True Intelligence Goes Way Beyond Logic

Sometimes people think that emotion and art are sort of sideshows to human intelligence and the real essence of intelligence is thinking logically.  If that were true, computers are already smarter than we are because they’re much better at logical thinking than we are.  

Intelligence actually involves things like being funny, being sexy or expressing a loving sentiment, maybe in a poem or in a musical piece.  That’s the cutting edge of human intelligence.  That’s what today humans are still better at than machines.  And the reason for it is they can say we can think with our neocortex with a greater number of levels of this conceptual hierarchy.

Something like “she’s pretty” is at a very high level in terms of the conceptual hierarchy, but we’re adding the ability of computers to think in conceptual hierarchy, particularly as we can master the technique that’s used in the human brain, and that’s what I articulate in my book. 

60 Second Reads is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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