What would we see if we looked inside a computer running AI software? Circuits and electrical signals. And inside our brains? Squishy cells transmitting electrochemical signals to one another. In terms of intelligence, what’s the real difference? To me, there is none. I don’t believe in “emerging” properties that suddenly come into existence as soon as some sort of threshold is crossed. Nor do I believe that intelligence is a yes/no concept. Things such as microelectronic components and cells may collectively give rise to behaviours that an observer might call intelligent (to some degree). There might be differences in the kinds of activities and tasks these entities perform, but again, this is not essential. For the sceptics, I suggest reading this paper, published in Scientific American, on so-called large language models like ChatGPT. Essentially, these models can perform tasks they were not explicitly trained for, seem capable of developing an internal representation of the real world and learn rules and information through their interactions with users, suggesting a form of ongoing adaptation and learning. I would definitely call this intelligence, at least to a degree, and perhaps studying AI models will help us understand more about our own. So let’s consider AI as another form of intelligence, one that, as I wrote in another post, probes our essence and our intentions.