Are We Betting on the Wrong Kind of Intelligence?

AI FOR EPISTEMICS & COORDINATION

Civilization and technology have radically improved the human condition. Nonetheless, the world sometimes goes in directions which essentially nobody would prefer — e.g., nuclear arms races, unexpected financial crashes, predatory marketing, or ubiquitous political misinformation.

The Age of Wonders and Terrors

Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, …

How Americans see AI impacting human skills; its role in science, matchmaking, religion and more

Majorities don’t want AI to give advice about religion or love. But many say AI should help forecast weather, search for financial crimes, develop medicine and more.

Agentic AI and the next intelligence explosion

For decades, the artificial intelligence (AI) “singularity” has been heralded as a single, titanic mind bootstrapping itself to godlike intelligence, consolidating all cognition into a cold silicon point. But this vision is almost certainly wrong in its most fundamental assumption. If AI development follows the path of previous major evolutionary transitions or “intelligence explosions,” our current step-change in computational intelligence will be plural, social, and deeply entangled with its forebears (us!).

AI Is Evolving — And Changing Our Understanding Of Intelligence

Advances in AI are making us reconsider what intelligence is and giving us clues to unlocking AI’s full potential.

The AI We Deserve

Critiques of artificial intelligence abound. Where’s the utopian vision for what it could be?

Are We Thinking Correctly About AI Intelligence? | Quanta Magazine

Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence doesn’t “think” or “reason” like humans, and how we can create better methods for measuring machine cognition.

WDR 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence

The World Development Report 2026 explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping development as a general‑purpose technology.

A more interesting upside of AI

Does AI provide anything to look forward to, if “super-intelligence” sounds boring?

I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence

I’ve often been surprised when I hear from top researchers in industry that they think AI will be better than them at their job in a few years, and I didn’t really know why I doubted it.

Where will AI be at the end of 2027? A bet

We, Gary Marcus, author, scientist, and noted skeptic of generative AI, and Miles Brundage, an independent AI policy researcher who recently left OpenAI and is bullish on AI progress, have agreed to the following bet, at 10:1 odds, with criteria drawn from two earlier Substack essays by Gary that proposed criteria for

Intelligence Rising

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to be one of the most transformative technologies in human history. 

Most Americans say AI development is moving too fast and twice as many are AI pessimists as AI optimists

Young adults are more likely than older Americans to believe that AI will create economic gains that benefit everyone, but they are also more likely to worry that AI will replace jobs they depend upon

The AI Apocalypse Is Already Here | Compact

Americans do not care for artificial intelligence. Recent polling shows that their attitudes mostly range from ambivalence to horror.