alt Hacker NewsI recently came across this presentation https://youtu.be/QxkRf-xSfgI, and it changed my view of AI quite significantly. (There is also a paper https://arxiv.org/html/2510.12066v2 .)
The fundamental idea is that "intelligence" really means trying to shorten the time to figure out something. So it's a tradeoff, not a quality. And AI agents are doing it.
Therefore, if that perspective is right, the issues that the OP describes are inherent to intelligent agents. They will try to find shortcuts, because that's what they do, it's what makes them intelligent in the first place.
People with ASD or ADHD or OCD, they are idiot-savants in the sense of that paper. They insist on search for solutions which are not easy to find, despite the common sense (aka intelligence) telling them otherwise.
It's a paradox that it is valuable to do this, but it is not smart. And it's probably why CEOs beat geniuses in the real world.
Replies
> The fundamental idea is that "intelligence" really means trying to shorten the time to figure out something.
"Figure out" implies awareness and structured understanding. If we relax the definition too much, then puddles of water are intelligent and uncountable monkeys on typewriters are figuring out Shakespeare.
CEOs beat geniuses in the real world because they often have other pathologies, like enough moral flexibility to ignore the externalities of their profit centers.
I'd also argue there's some training bias in the performance, it's not just smart shortcuts... Claude especially seems prone to getting into a 'wrap it up' mode even when the plan is only half way completed and starts deferring rather than completing tasks.