AI Thinks It’s Smart. Chimps May Beg to Differ.

For something so admired, so synonymous with merit, the concept of intelligence is remarkably poorly understood. Our society operates on the assumption that people with greater intelligence deserve access to better schools and better jobs. Many people believe that animals with higher intelligence deserve to be treated more humanely, or at least not used for food. Our tech leaders obsess over comparing human intelligence with the latest AI systems. Many claim that once these systems surpass us in intelligence, they will quickly enslave us, destroy us, or solve all our problems.

How can we compare human and machine intelligence when we can’t decide which species — cats or dogs — is more intelligent? Scientists who study human or animal behavior and brainpower tend to view intelligence differently, breaking it down into abilities they can actually measure. What impressed them was a recent paper providing experimental evidence that chimpanzees can use reasoning to weigh different strengths of evidence, draw rational conclusions, update beliefs, and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their own knowledge.