Season: Nature of Intelligence

Right now, AI is having a moment — and it’s not the first time grand predictions about the potential of machines are being made. But, what does it really mean to say something like ChatGPT is “intelligent”? What exactly is intelligence?

In this season of the Complexity podcast, The Nature of Intelligence, we'll explore this question through conversations with cognitive and neuroscientists, animal cognition researchers, and AI experts in six episodes. Together, we'll investigate the complexities of human intelligence, how it compares to that of other species, and where AI fits in. We'll dive into the relationship between language and thought, examine AI's limitations, and ask: Could machines ever truly be like us?

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Episodes

AI's Changing Seasons (background: Ricard Solé, center: Dalle-E, graphic design: Nicholas Graham/SFI)

Episode 6: AI’s changing seasons

In the final episode of the season, Abha sits down with Melanie to hear her perspective. They chat about Melanie’s career and research with Douglas Hofstadter, the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach. They also discuss her opinions on LLMs’ current capabilities, what she thinks of existential questions like the alignment problem, how sustainable the industry is, the difficulty of making claims about concepts like “intelligence” and “understanding,” and what she thinks future technological development should focus on. 



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Swarming tumbleweeds (artwork by Ricard Solé)

Episode 5: How do we assess intelligence?

When it comes to assessing intelligence, people have all kinds of tests — the SAT, IQ tests, and so on. There’s controversy over how fairly these tests really measure human intelligence, but at the very least, we know that they correlate with some general reasoning skills when people take them. That assumption breaks down when we try to assess intelligence in non-humans. What does it mean when a large language model passes an intelligence test meant for humans? Does it actually have the same reasoning skills that a human does, or is it doing something else? In today’s episode, with guests Erica Cartmill and Ellie Pavlick, we investigate the best ways to assess intelligence in non-humans, whether animals or machines. 



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Embryo-enhanced brain (artwork by Ricard Solé)

Episode 4: Babies vs Machines

There’s an argument to be made that if we train AI systems to learn the way babies do, we’ll get them closer to human-like intelligence. But how our own learning development functions in babyhood is still a mystery that researchers are untangling. We know that the information babies absorb is very different from how an LLM learns, and in today’s episode, with guests Linda Smith and Michael Frank we’ll attempt to look at the world through an infant’s eyes and examine why they’re able to do more with, seemingly, less information. 



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Photosynthetic Octopus (artwork by Ricard Solé)

Episode 3: What kind of intelligence is an LLM?

Large language models, like ChatGPT and Claude, have remarkably coherent communication skills. Yet, what this says about their “intelligence” isn’t clear.  Is it possible that they could arrive at the same level of intelligence as humans without taking the same evolutionary or learning path to get there?  Or, if they’re not on a path to human-level intelligence, where are they now and where will they end up? In this episode, with guests Tomer Ullman and Murray Shanahan, we look at how large language models function and examine differing views on how sophisticated they are and where they might be going.



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Supersymmetric brain (artwork by Ricard Solé)

Ep. 2: The relationship between language and thought

Complex language is unique to the human species. It’s part of how we evolved, the backbone of our societies, and one of the primary ways we judge others’ intellect. Is it our intelligence that leads to our language abilities, or conversely, does our ability for language enhance our intelligence, or both? How do language and thinking interact? And can one exist without the other? Guests: Evelina Federenko, Steve Piantadosi, and Gary Lupyan.



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Çeci n'est pas uncerveau (artwork by Ricard Solé)

Ep. 1: What is Intelligence

Depending on whom you ask, artificial intelligence is either going to solve all humanity’s problems, or it’s going to kill us. Business leaders are getting ready for it to “disrupt” entire industries, and educators are re-thinking how to teach in the age of ChatGPT. It can feel like artificial intelligence is going to transform everything about the way we live. But in order to understand how to think about AI, it’s useful to take a step back. In today’s episode, we’re asking what it means to call anything intelligent. What makes humans intelligent? And how do machines compare? Guests: John Krakauer and Alison Gopnik



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Archive

  • Complexity, Listen to the first 106 episodes of the Complexity Podcast for conversations with our worldwide network of scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, artists, and other leading thinkers.
  • Alien Crash Site, an initiative of the InterPlanetary Project, celebrates the mutual influence of science and science-fiction. Every guest — whether astrobiologist or Olympic athlete — imagines one alien technology that could change the course of human advancement.