Getting It Wrong: The AI Labor Displacement Error (Part 2)—The Nature of Intelligence
( Read Part 1: Introduction )
THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE
Scientists and philosophers have explored the nature of Intelligence for millennia, but the accumulated knowledge has never been assembled into a coherent theory. Fragments are scattered across history and strewn amongst scientific disciplines like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together into a clear picture. While we can’t fully describe a rigorous General Theory of Intelligence here, we can trace an outline of some primary features based on key puzzle pieces. We can also identify the reasons why the lack of such a theory has led to serious failures such as the AI Labor Displacement Error. A general theory of Intelligence will help us understand why Artificial Intelligence is, counter to all expectations, replacing human artistic labor first and physical work last, and how we got it so very wrong.
The history of philosophical and scientific inquiry has produced three core perspectives on the nature of Intelligence:
Intelligence as the cognitive capacity of discrete entities: This traditional view focuses on the individual cognitive capabilities of humans or other intelligent agents.
Intelligence as an evolutionary property of complex systems: This perspective broadens the definition to include the emergent properties of systems like ecosystems, societies, or even the universe itself.
Intelligence as a fundamental self-organizing, integrative principle of a holistic universe: This expansive view positions Intelligence as a universal principle driving evolutionary phenomena across all domains.
Each of these perspectives holds its own validity, but they are not mutually exclusive and in fact are far more powerful when integrated into a holistic general theory of Intelligence. Individual cognitive capacity, systemic evolutionary complexification and processes of self-organizing integrality can and should be united into the definition of Intelligence as the entities, systems and processes that make up our Universe in a framework that recognizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of these distinct epistemological and ontological levels of analysis as a holism. Each perspective—intelligence as a cognitive capacity of discrete entities, as an evolutionary property of complex systems, and as an integrative, universal principle—is effective within its respective domain while also contributing to the holism of Intelligence.
At the level of the holism the Intelligence equally contains and emerges from the action of its components. There is no hierarchical or linear relationship or process in its complex, adaptive systemics.
How can this ontology help us to understand the nature of the AI Labor Displacement Error?
Let’s recall that there was a bias that favored the early replacement of physical labor by AI relative to mental, non-physical work. In the ontology of Intelligence the physical and the mental are, along with all other phenomena, artifacts produced through the holism. In the integrality there is no linear procedure from first to last, or hierarchy of superior to inferior. The mental and the physical are therefore equally both artifacts as well as components in the Intelligence.
This perspective stands in sharp relief to the predominant scientific reductionist worldview which describes the universe in terms of a linear causal construction from inferior to superior. In relation to our central problem of the AI labor replacement sequence, the most relevant manifestation of this intellectual bias is that of Mind-Body Dualism, or the superiority of the mental relative to the physical.
Next: Part 3: Mind-Body Dualism