Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of the black and white picture of all the scientist of 19th century together. Each individual in that photo had contributed something to human knowledge. It feels like in 19th century we believed in our scientists and advancing our knowledge. I feel today celebrities are given more importance than our scientists. The best minds of our century are focused on extracting value from rest of the population.

If we train AI on human works and humans only do what the AI says, we're at a maximum.

Maybe peak human intelligence is like peak oil - it only goes down from here.

Like renewables were on track to bring us peak oil, maybe AI will bring us peak human intelligence.

I assume you are here talking about political choices, social media influences, life style choices and so on.

While all those are true they are not reflecting the level of intelligence of people: intelligent people take personal stupid decisions because while intelligence is a function of let's say the more "abstract brain", decisions are emotionally driven and influenced by the "ancient, threat focused, pleasure driven brain".

Here is a quick way to think about this: some intelligent people are obease, some others don't exercise, and others don't take their health seriously while also working on the most amazing problems we ever solved. You know what's the biggest paradox here: they all have the capacity to understand fully the impact of their lifestyle on their health but still making a life style change is hard due to not being driven by knowledge and logic.

Neither intelligence nor knowledge, if you mean us average people.

But that shouldn't be any surprise. We're already at more than a hundred years of deliberate dumbing down of the population through schooling and mass media. These effects are exponential through generations.

What do you mean by intelligence? And by your definition of it, can intelligence be improved intentionally or it happens as it happens like for evolution? If it happens by intention then why we have not pushed it at its maximium yet?

“Pinnacle” just means “highest point” here. They are saying that AI might take human intelligence to a higher point than was previously reached. That’s debatable, of course, but isn’t what you seem to be arguing against.

Yeah, we peaked somewhere near the end of XIX century IMO. Before the transition to mass society.

> I see no indication that current human intelligence is at anything close to a historical pinnacle. Human knowledge, yes, but intelligence? No. Collectively, we're dumb and trending dumber

We are at a peak in absolute terms, though the decline is coming quickly:

https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/2034755779501105321

But in relative terms intelligence has indeed been declining for a long time:

https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/2034912319256330729

  > I see no indication that current human intelligence is at anything close to a historical pinnacle. Human knowledge, yes, but intelligence? No. Collectively, we're dumb and trending dumber

Also, I think we (non-scientists) might be overestimating the average historical intelligence - see Flynn Effect [1] - perhaps because of a bias in our perception of the past levels based on who published books and thoughts - basically more intelligent members of our species.

  > and the tendency towards lazy thoughtlessness which AI engenders

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

[2] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.20 — 5th c. BCE Greece. “So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”

[3] Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2 — 4th c. BCE Greece. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/stasis/2017/honeycutt/aris.... Aristotle treats public persuasion as necessary partly because ordinary audiences cannot easily follow complex chains of reasoning. He says rhetoric addresses deliberative matters before people “who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.”

[4] Plato, Republic, Book V — 4th c. BCE Greece. https://topostext.org/work/768. Plato distinguishes philosophers from the many “lovers of sights and sounds,” who enjoy appearances but do not apprehend deeper truth. The text says their thought is “incapable” of grasping the underlying form or nature of beauty, and that few attain that deeper vision.

[5] Confucius, Analects, Book 2 — 5th c. BCE China. https://www.chinastory.cn/ywdbk/english/v1/detail/20190722/1.... "Learning without thought is pointless, Thought without learning is dangerous".

[6] Buddhist tradition, Dhammapada, Appamāda-vagga. https://suttacentral.net/dhp21-32/en/sujato. Dhammapada contrasts heedfulness with heedlessness, treating heedlessness as a central human failing. In one translation: “Heedfulness is the state free of death; heedlessness is the state of death. The heedful do not die, while the heedless are like the dead.”

[7] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, “Idols of the Mind” — 1620. https://history.hanover.edu/texts/bacon/novorg.html. Bacon argues that the “Idols of the Tribe” are rooted in human nature itself, and that human understanding distorts reality like a false mirror.

Are you implying that all the scientific achievements of the last hundred years don't count somehow?