Artificial Intelligence? How About First Getting Real About Human Intelligence?

The Urgent Need to Reconnect with the Mystery and Majesty of Being Human

Image by Martin Reisch on Unsplash

We find ourselves in a very special moment in the history of humanity constantly talking about and interacting with Artificial Intelligence. I find it pretty dangerous when we speak endlessly about something without truly defining or deeply understanding it.

I’m specifically talking about what intelligence is, and even more importantly, what human intelligence is. So, let’s go on a bit of a journey into the subject.

The Intelligence Quotient — IQ

Many generations have been brought up with the belief that the IQ score measures human intelligence through a set of standardized tests or subtests. What fewer people know is that the concept of IQ was initially developed by the German psychologist William Stern over 100 years ago. His intent was to identify children with learning disabilities so they could receive appropriate support. Later, other scientists contributed to the development of the tests used today.

Altogether, IQ tests measure how an individual’s brain functions across various domains such as abstract reasoning, memory, and problem-solving. Despite their widespread usage, many specialists agree that IQ tests do not encompass the full spectrum of human intelligence and do not play a major role in a person’s accomplishments.

Multiple Intelligences

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that science began expanding on this theory. Howard Gardner introduced the theory of multiple intelligences, stating that there isn't just one type of intelligence, but rather a range of distinct intelligences. Gardner initially identified eight, later added a ninth, and some models now include a tenth.

Here’s a list of the commonly cited ten intelligences:

• Linguistic Intelligence – The ability to use language effectively, including reading, writing, and speaking.

• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence – The capacity to reason, analyze, and solve problems using logic and numbers.

• Spatial Intelligence – The ability to perceive and manipulate visual information, think in three dimensions, and understand spatial relationships.

• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence – The ability to use one’s body skillfully and to understand and control movement.

• Musical Intelligence – The capacity to understand, create, and appreciate music.

• Interpersonal Intelligence – The ability to understand and interact effectively with others, including recognizing emotions and motivations.

• Intrapersonal Intelligence – The ability to understand oneself, including one’s own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.

• Naturalistic Intelligence – The ability to understand and appreciate the natural world: plants, animals, ecosystems.

• Existential Intelligence – The capacity to ponder deep questions about life, death, and the human condition.

• Moral/Ethical Intelligence – The capacity to understand and apply moral principles, including a sense of right and wrong and social advancement.

Despite this advancement in our understanding, even this expanded theory falls short of capturing the true complexity of human intelligence.

Expanding the List — The Last 30 Years

The biggest stir around the concept of intelligence (not including AI) came with Emotional Intelligence (EQ). While important, EQ is far from being the only dimension deserving our attention. Drawing from Wikipedia and other public sources, here are some more:

• Emotional Intelligence (EQ) — Popularized in 1995 by Daniel Goleman's bestselling book, EQ is the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions, both our own and others’, to guide thinking and behavior and adapt to changing environments.

• Spiritual Intelligence (SI) — Introduced in 1997 by Danah Zohar and Ken O'Donnell. Zohar focused on SI as a means to harness spiritual resources for personal growth and well-being, while O'Donnell explored its role in organizations.

• Collective Intelligence (CI) — Coined by Pierre Lévy in the mid-1990s, CI arises from the collaboration, competition, and combined knowledge of groups, often outperforming individual efforts.

• Collaborative Intelligence — Refers to distributed systems where multiple agents contribute to a problem-solving network. It mirrors ecosystems, where each organism plays a unique role shaped by genetics, behavior, and context.

• Intuitive Intelligence — While intuition has always been known, it gained prominence through the work of Carl Jung. This intelligence refers to the ability to access knowledge and wisdom without conscious reasoning. Intuitive Intelligence is the capacity to connect with and leverage that capacity in everyday life.

• Intercultural Intelligence (CQ) — Also called cultural intelligence, introduced by P. Christopher Earley and Soon Ang. It is the ability to relate and work effectively across cultural contexts, navigating with awareness, adaptability, and empathy.

• Relational Intelligence (RQ) — Introduced by Isabelle Hau, RQ is the ability to discern who to include in one’s life and how to relate meaningfully. It emphasizes trust-building, collaboration, and reading the relational field.

• Change Intelligence — Introduced by Barbara A. Trautlein, this refers to the awareness of one’s own change leadership style and the ability to adapt it to lead effectively across different people and situations.

• Conversational Intelligence — Introduced by Judith Glaser, it's not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success.

And to this list, here are some additions following recent thought leadership:

• Systemic Intelligence — The capacity to perceive underlying patterns and relationships in living systems. It involves seeing beyond isolated events to recognize the interconnectedness and interdependence of all elements within a complex living system.

• Emergent Learning Intelligence — Emergent learning is a collaborative, iterative process of discovery through experimentation and reflection. As an intelligence, it is about the capacity for continious learning, adaptability, as well as the cultivation of a learning culture within complex environments.

I have a few more to add, but I’ll stop here. It’s already quite a lot to digest.

Human Intelligence

Most of the more recent additions to this growing constellation of intelligences fall within the realms of emotion, spirituality, adaptation, interconnectedness, and living systems. In fact, many of them refer to very similar and interconnected aspects differentiated only by the utility we see in them.

Collectively, this long list of human intelligences and our limited knowledge of them hints at the broader truth: we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what human intelligence is in the context of life and the Universe.

Historically, our ancestors have known about some of these intelligences. However, in the last 100 years we have been captivated by the rational mind. This is also why we are so drawn to Artificial Intelligence: its endless data and ability to recombine and deliver information in staggering ways mesmerizes us.

However, by being unaware of the breathtaking complexity, majesty and magic of life surrounding us and being us, we are like ants diligently moving straws back and forth unaware of what really happens around us.

And here’s the truth. Using AI in life-affirming ways is a function of how developed our human intelligences are. Without relational sensitivity, intuitive wisdom, spiritual depth, or moral clarity, AI is just a tool. And a dangerous one.

These Human Intelligences are at the core of The Human Advantage— the unique way in which humans outperform machines.

The Human Advantage cannot be replicated by AI and other technology, but it can be very successfully mimicked. It already is. And we won’t know the difference, or be able to capitalize on it, unless we remember and master these human intelligences.

If it was up to me, I will make their development obligatory from primary school and throughout all education and life-long learning programs.

Instead, what I see is a push to develop AI Literacy. Sounds good but let’s see what it is. According to the World Economic Forum, AI Literacy encompasses four domains: Engaging with AI, Creating with AI, Managing AI’s actions and Designing AI solutions. Despite including competences like critical thinking and responsibility, the framework fails to include any aspects of the key human intelligences I wrote here about. For that reason, I consider such frameworks useless and even dangerous if this is all we would do to prepare for this new world we already live in.