What is human intelligence?

Human intelligence encompasses the mental capacities of the human species to learn, understand, reason, plan, solve problems, and communicate using language. It serves as the baseline benchmark that theoretical artificial general intelligence systems aim to match or surpass across cognitive tasks. Understanding human cognitive abilities also provides a contrast to technical intelligence-gathering methods such as signals intelligence.

What we know

• Human intelligence includes the mental capacities to learn, understand, and reason. [3]
• Human intelligence involves the capacities to comprehend ideas, plan, solve problems, and use language to communicate. [3]
• Artificial general intelligence is a hypothetical type of artificial intelligence designed to match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. [1, 2]

Still open

• Contention exists over whether artificial general intelligence represents an existential risk or is currently in too remote a stage to present such a risk.

Where to go next

• compared withWhat is artificial general intelligence?
• a case in pointHow does intelligence gathering work using human sources?
• how we knowWhy do people overestimate artificial intelligence abilities?
• what caused itWhat are the goals of technology companies developing advanced AI?
• the bigger pictureWhat is the outline of topics related to human cognitive functions?
• an unexpected connectionHow does human intelligence connect to espionage and interrogation?Both concepts share the exact same name and acronym, yet one refers to human cognitive mental capacities while the other describes interpersonal intelligence-gathering operations like espionage.

Sources

• [1]artificial general intelligence (Wikidata Q2264109) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Artificial general intelligence · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Outline of human intelligence · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Human intelligence (intelligence gathering) · CC BY-SA 4.0