A new essay by Google Vice President and Fellow Blaise Agüera y Arcas, titled "AI Is Evolving — And Changing Our Understanding Of Intelligence," has been published in Noema magazine. The piece, announced via a tweet from "hardmaru," delves into how advancements in artificial intelligence are prompting a fundamental reconsideration of what constitutes intelligence. According to the tweet, these developments are also providing crucial insights into unlocking AI's full potential.
Agüera y Arcas, who serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Technology & Society and founded the Paradigms of Intelligence team at Google, argues that computing existed in nature long before human-built computers. His essay posits that understanding computing as a natural phenomenon is key to significant advancements in computer science and AI. He suggests that both modern human intelligence and AI are best understood through a "symbiotic lens," highlighting a collective aspect of intelligence.
The Google executive's work often challenges conventional views, with some of his recent writings, co-authored with Peter Norvig, suggesting that today's advanced AI models, despite their flaws, could be recognized in the future as the first true examples of artificial general intelligence (AGI). This perspective stands in contrast to skeptics like linguist Noam Chomsky and cognitive psychologist Gary Marcus, who maintain that current large language models do not process information in the same way humans do. Agüera y Arcas's research at Google focuses on augmentative, privacy-first, and collectively beneficial AI applications, including on-device machine learning and the development of Federated Learning.
His extensive background includes leading teams in machine vision, augmented reality, and wearable computing, and he is a prominent voice in discussions about AI ethics, fairness, and bias. Agüera y Arcas is also the author of an upcoming book, "What Is Intelligence?", which further explores the idea that prediction is fundamental to intelligence and life itself. His essay in Noema continues to shape the discourse around the philosophical and practical implications of rapidly evolving AI capabilities.