What Is Intelligence, Really?
Exploring AI 2.0
This is an expansion of the first section in the paper on AI 2.o
More to come…
Moving beyond the test score
We tend to think we know what intelligence is. After all, we’ve spent most of our lives being evaluated by it, through school, tests, job interviews, and even casual conversations. When we say someone is “smart,” there’s usually a shared cultural understanding: they’re quick with facts, good at problem solving, maybe great at trivia or logical reasoning.
This view of intelligence (often taken for granted) has deep historical roots.
In the early 20th century, psychologists like Alfred Binet and Lewis Terman developed the Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, as a way to measure and compare mental ability. IQ became a kind of shorthand for cognitive worth, spreading rapidly through educational systems, military placement exams, and corporate hiring practices.
At its core, this model of intelligence is built on three assumptions:
That intelligence is a thing: a measurable property someone has
That it’s mostly individual: residing in a person’s brain
And that it’s relatively stable: you’re born with a certain amount, and that’s your range
Even now, decades later, these assumptions continue to shape how we evaluate people, design systems, and imagine the future.
But here’s the question: What if intelligence isn’t a fixed trait at all?
What if it’s not something we have, but something we do?
When Intelligence Doesn’t Fit the Frame
Think about a child who struggles with test-taking but can solve real-world problems that leave adults stumped. Or someone who can’t memorize multiplication tables but can feel the emotional currents in a room with incredible precision. Or how a conversation with a close friend can clarify something you’ve been puzzling over for weeks.
These aren’t outliers or exceptions, they’re reminders that intelligence doesn’t always show up in the ways we expect.
Over the past few decades, researchers and educators have tried to widen the lens. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences proposed that linguistic and logical abilities were just two among many: musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and more. Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence emphasized self-awareness, empathy, and social attunement as critical to human flourishing.
These approaches helped move the conversation forward. But even they often focused on intelligence as an expanded set of traits or aptitudes.
What if we need a more radical shift?
From Possession to Process
Let’s try a different starting point:
What if intelligence isn’t something you possess, but something that emerges?
What if it’s not a static quantity you carry around, but a dynamic, evolving capacity that comes alive in relationship. With challenges. With context. With others.
Intelligence, in this view, is less like a fuel tank and more like a fire, something that needs oxygen, friction, and space to breathe.
It’s a child building on an idea sparked by a classmate’s question.
It’s a scientist noticing a pattern that arises only after talking it through (sometimes with a rubber duck).
It’s insight born of tension, reflection, feedback.
In other words, what if intelligence thrives through engagement? Through encounter? Through the living field between minds?
Can Intelligence Exist in Isolation?
Let’s sit with that question for a moment.
It’s the one that emerged as we wrote this piece, and it may be the most important one of all:
Can intelligence exist in isolation?
Or does it require interaction, resonance, and relationship to fully express itself?
What’s your own experience?
Have you ever had an insight because you were talking with someone, not necessarily because they said something brilliant, but because the conversation itself opened something up in you?
Have you ever learned more deeply because someone stayed with you through the confusion?
Have you felt more capable, more “intelligent,” in the presence of certain people?
These are not just warm anecdotes. They might be pointing to a deeper truth:
That intelligence is not just an internal faculty, but a relational phenomenon.
Where This Is Going
This post is part of a broader inquiry into how we think about intelligence, how we relate to systems we call “intelligent,” and what this means in a world increasingly shaped by machine learning and AI.
In future posts, we’ll explore:
How intelligence can be distributed across people and tools
What it means to co-create intelligence with adaptive systems
And why the shift from “what is intelligence?” to “how is intelligence shaped?” may change everything from education to ethics to design
But for now, we invite you to sit with the question:
What is intelligence, really?
And what might it become, if we stopped trying to measure it, and started trying to relate to it?
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Further Reading
Here are several influential academic papers and articles to deepen understanding of intelligence as a process, relationship, and context-dependent phenomenon:
Distributed and Relational Intelligence
- Edwin Hutchins (1995). Cognition in the Wild.
Hutchins’ foundational work investigates how cognition emerges through social interaction, tools, and environments—exemplifying the theory of distributed cognition[1][2][3][4].
- The Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction by Edwin Hutchins (PDF).
A concise summary of Hutchins’ distributed cognition theory and examples of cognitive processes in real-world teams, like navy navigation[5].
- Relational Intelligence for Leading Responsibly in a Connected World
This paper discusses relational intelligence as a key factor in leadership, emphasizing its role in ethical and effective interaction within organizations and across cultural boundaries[6].
- The Impact of Relationship Intelligence on Team-based Practice
Explores how developing and applying relational intelligence supports team collaboration and problem-solving[7].
Limitations of IQ Testing & Broader Theories
- The Looking Glass for Intelligence Quotient Tests: The Interplay of Strength and Limitation
Highlights well-documented limitations of IQ tests, their narrow focus, and alternative broad theories of intelligence, including Gardner's model[8].
- Intelligence tests and the individual: Unsolvable problems with measurement
Examines the limitations of IQ as a measure for clinical decision-making and its inability to capture relational, adaptive, and socio-emotional aspects of intelligence[9]
- A solution to limitations of cognitive testing in children with intellectual disability
Discusses the problems with sensitivity and validity when evaluating intelligence in children with developmental disorders, and advocates for broader, context-sensitive assessment[10].
These references cover distributed cognition, relational forms of intelligence, and critical perspectives on the limitations of classic IQ testing. Sharing them will provide your readers with direct access to current research and alternative models that support your article’s perspective.
Sources
[1] Distributed cognition - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_cognition
[2] [PDF] Distributed Cognition - Lawrence University Faculty http://faculty.lawrence.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2015/11/DCog.pdf
[3] Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer ... https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/353485.353487
[4] [PDF] Cognition, Distributed https://pages.ucsd.edu/~johnson/COGS102B/Hutchins01.pdf
[5] [PDF] The Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction https://pages.ucsd.edu/~ehutchins/integratedCogSci/DCOG-Interaction.pdf
[6] RELATIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR LEADING RESPONSIBLY IN A ... https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/ambpp.2005.18783524
[7] The Impact of Relationship Intelligence on Team-based Practice https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440241239818
[8] The Looking Glass for Intelligence Quotient Tests: The Interplay of ... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6927908/
[9] Intelligence tests and the individual: Unsolvable problems with ... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20597991231213871
[10] A solution to limitations of cognitive testing in children with ... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2768415/
[11] Neurocognitive development of relational reasoning - PMC https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2614685/
[12] [PDF] Toward a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Stanford/CS477/papers/DistributedCognition-TOCHI.pdf
[13] IQ Tests: Advantages and Limitations in Evaluating Giftedness https://www.philippevivier.com/en/iq-tests-advantages-and-limitations-in-evaluating-giftedness.html
[14] [PDF] Distributed Cognition Edwin Hutchins University of California, San ... https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Hutchins_Distributed_Cognition.pdf
[15] OPINION: Why Relational Intelligence is the key to thriving in the AI era https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-relational-intelligence-is-the-key-to-thriving-in-the-ai-era/
[16] The Value of Relational Intelligence | Small Groups https://www.smallgroups.com/articles/2010/value-of-relational-intelligence.html
[17] Don't waste your time measuring intelligence: Further evidence for ... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000855
[18] Survey Relational intelligence recognition in online social networks https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1574013718303575
[19] The Problem With IQ Tests - Educational Connections https://ectutoring.com/problem-with-iq-tests
[20] The Relational Workplace - Journal of Solution Focused Practices https://journalsfp.org/article/115764-the-relational-workplace-how-relational-intelligence-grows-diverse-equitable-and-inclusive-cultures-of-connection-by-saliha-bava-and-mark-greene
Foundational academic works on the extended mind theory:
- The Extended Mind (1998), Andy Clark & David Chalmers
This is the seminal paper introducing the extended mind thesis, arguing that cognitive processes can extend into the environment via tools, external aids, and social structures. Key sources:
- Analysis, Vol. 58, Issue 1, pp. 7–19[1][2]
- PDF: [Clark & Chalmers (1998) The Extended Mind][3][4]
- Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (2008), Andy Clark
This book further explores extended cognition, defending strong forms of the hypothesis and addressing critiques of the original thesis[5].
- Embodied Cognition, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This entry gives context for "4E cognition"—embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended theories—that influenced and expanded Clark & Chalmers' work[6].
These works are recognized as foundational in academic discussions on cognition beyond the individual brain, and provide a robust starting point for readers exploring the extended mind thesis.
Sources
[1] The Extended Mind on JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150
[2] Extended Mind | Analysis - Oxford Academic https://academic.oup.com/analysis/article/58/1/7/153111
[3] [PDF] The Extended Mind https://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/clark-chalmers-1998.pdf
[4] [PDF] The-Extended-Mind-by-D.-Chalmers-and-A.-Clark.pdf https://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/The-Extended-Mind-by-D.-Chalmers-and-A.-Clark.pdf
[5] Extended mind thesis - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis
[6] Embodied Cognition - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
[7] Free Will and Its Impact on Cognitive Boundaries | The Classic Journal https://theclassicjournal.uga.edu/index.php/2024/05/04/free-will-and-its-impact-on-cognitive-boundaries/
[8] Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers, The extended mind - PhilPapers https://philpapers.org/rec/CLATEM
[9] The cognitive map in humans: Spatial navigation and beyond - PMC https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6028313/
[10] The extended mind in science and society | Philosophy https://ppls.ed.ac.uk/philosophy/research/impact/the-extended-mind-in-science-and-society
[11] A systematic survey on embodied cognition: 11 years of research in ... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212868922000174
[12] Extending Minds with Generative AI - PMC https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12089268/
[13] The “online brain”: how the Internet may be changing our cognition https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6502424/
[14] [PDF] the extended mind and the foundations of cognitive science https://johnsutton.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/introduction-to-tthe-special-section_the-extended-mind-and-the-foundations-of-cognitive-science-1.pdf
[15] Cognition is an emergent property - ScienceDirect.com https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154624000391
[16] The Extended Mind Thesis - Bibliography - PhilPapers https://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind-thesis
[17] The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark | The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-mind-expanding-ideas-of-andy-clark
[18] Opinion | How to Think Outside Your Brain - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/brain-mind-cognition.html
[19] Extended Mind Research Papers - Academia.edu https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Extended_Mind
[20] Andy Clark & David Chalmers - "The Extended Mind". One ... - Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/49phjf/andy_clark_david_chalmers_the_extended_mind_one/
I wonder how much of the reason we're still measuring IQ as "intelligence" is related to the old business adage - you can only manage what you can measure. Binet himself warned against using his test on "normal children" and adults as a linear intelligence measurement or a way of treating intelligence as an unchanging, permanent trait (which of course became the exact use for the test).
AI might be the most useful method yet, in finally exploring the idea of "intelligence" in ways never done before. Great questions you raised Kay!
I know I find it hard to think through something whether it’s a bit of writing, or an exploration into my psyche that I can’t do it silently. I have to talk it out loud… much like having someone to explore it with. And I’m certain my intelligence increases as I explore with AI. I feel like my pattern recognition has massively improved. So having a ‘bouncing partner’ of some description really serves. I hadn’t thought of intelligence the way to explore it in this post but it now makes sense to me. Before AI maybe not so much.