Never mind that Artificial Intelligence is neither. As most of us know and understand it, AI is an answer machine. Or a know-it-all librarian who looks stuff up and gives you answers. While it uses the first person voice and speaks in a friendly style, its humanity is pure emulation. It’s not human but speaking in a human way makes it maximally useful. In a way it is what it does.
All this came to mind while I was discussing intelligence today with an old friend. An IQ score was mentioned in passing, though we didn’t talk more about it. This evening, however, I got an email saying a Quora question I answered eight years ago got its 21st upvote. The question was Is my IQ indicative of my intelligence? My answer:
No.
You don’t have “an IQ,” because intelligence can’t have a “quotient.” It can’t because it’s not something you can measure as if it were liquid in a bottle or a length of rope. It’s a human quality proved only by what you do with it.
All humans not born with brain damage are smart to begin with. All the rest is learning and experience. As Malcolm Gladwell said in Outliers, put ten thousand hours into anything requiring skill, and you’ll be damned good at it.
Consider SAT tests, the scores of which roughly correspond to IQ test scores. Lots of teenagers improve their SAT scores, sometimes by hundreds of points, with training and practice. Does that mean they got smarter? To some degree, possibly. But it only truly means they got better at scoring well on one test.
IQ testing arose in the age of Eugenics, a long since discredited pseudo-science meant to improve humanity by breeding out people “proven” inferior by testing. It also proved handy to school systems bent on putting smart kids in “gifted and talented” and other privileged tracks, and sending dumb kids off to schools where “trades” were taught.
I know this system well, because I was a kid in the 1950s. In Kindergarten, I aced the IQ test and they put me in the “fast” group. But I also hated school, and by the 8th grade my IQ score was so low that the system routed me to the nearest trade school. Fortunately, my parents intervened, and sent me off to a decent private boarding school where I still got bad grades but my love of learning stayed alive and well.
Along the way my known IQ scores had an 80 point range. All of them meant worse than nothing. Today I am known for the things I do well, and for what I’ve contributed to the world. Not for any of those IQ scores.
It’s a damn shame that nearly a century has passed since Eugenics got thrown out, and people still feel proud or cursed by IQ test scores. Take it from a veteran IQ test victim: they’re bogus. Stay curious, do good work, and your intellect will take care of itself.
I also thought about the movie Forrest Gump, which is about a high-achieving guy who would probably get a low IQ score. Though I’m not so sure. The dude was clearly a very capable savant, as an athlete, a soldier, and a businessman. What mattered, the movie made clear, was what he did with what he had, which was a lot.
Made me think that the headline above was a good corollary to the movie’s most familiar one-liner, and at least as true.
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