What is Intelligence? by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, MIT Press, Nov 15, 2025
Historians dislike the idea of prediction, but if we bring up the topic of tomorrow’s weather they will likely not object to consulting a forecast.
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This author’s central thesis argues – see pages 23-25 of the hardcopy edition – that machines can now “predict” and fool humans, passing the “Turing Test” which was designed to detect the differences between digital and human replies to questions or instructions (think “Captcha” images). He asserts in this book that intelligence IS prediction, while asking elsewhere: “Is Life a Form of Computation?” (see MIT Press Reader, Sept 2025).
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I’ve mostly avoided a study of A.I. during this developmental period, but I do think this book could be a landmark title, coming from a contrarian expert.
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NEWS FLASH … Secretary of Defense, Pete Repeat, recently announced that DoD would break its contract with Anthropic, a leading A,I. developer, no longer allowing that firm’s Claude software to be used by US military, as Anthropic’s contract prohibits the use of its software to conduct mass surveillance of Americans. (The president agrees with Pete, and extends the ban to other portions of the federal government!) Big Brother in jack boots! “Wandering police* “. — brutal, anonymous secret police behind masks!
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* “Wandering police’: in 2024 the city of Hanceville Alabama fired its entire police force for being incompetent or corrupt, according to CNN.
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THE BOOK can be sampled at Amazon, for readers or listeners.
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Readers shopping for a favorite A.I. who also respect our Constitution (and contract law) would do well to choose Claude software, by Anthropic. (None of us is as smart as all of us!)