Are we smarter than our ancestors? – II

Today’s wood cutting and harvesting is way more efficient than in the past thanks to machines that can do in a few minutes what took lumberjacks a full day. Behind that there is the intelligence of some engineers who designed the machines and the work of many people manufacturing them. Knowing how to use and where to use them requires smart people, but these smart people could not exist 200 years ago since those machines were not there! Image credit: myinteriordesign..win

In the closing of the previous post I tried to make clear that the focus here is on smartness not on intelligence. There are tools to measure intelligence, IQ tests. However, these tools are using measuring sticks that are suited to our current view of Intelligence. Were we to apply those IQ tests to people who lived 200 years ago we would get IQ results, on average, around 70, which is the thresholds for borderline deficiency. Actually, our great grandfathers were, on average, as intelligent as we are, the difference is in the measuring stick.

Clearly, today’s access to better education makes intelligence bloom, more than 200 years ago when education was restricted to a small subset of the population.

This intelligence blooming along with economic, science and technology growth, supported by better communications that makes ideas reach globally (notice that all these factors are loosely interconnected and influence one another) have led to the creation of tools and to a change in the environment. It is possible to have smarter relations with the environment and the environment itself, particularly in these last few years, is becoming smart. As a consequence, we are also becoming smarter!

The rise of artificial intelligence that is characterising this period and will be have a much stronger impact in the coming two decades, is effectively flanking human intelligence. The symbioses of these two kinds of intelligences in the next decade will create the condition for much smarter relations with the environment.

Our symbioses with the environment will be taken to a deeper level, the one of modelling “what if” situations that will be used as tools to take smarter decisions.

We won’t be smarter than our ancestors, but our symbioses with the environment, mediated by much more effective tools will result in smarter relations than in the past improving our wellbeing and the wellbeing of Planet Earth.

This evolution path is being explored by the IEEE Future Direction Initiative Symbiotic Autonomous Systems where both augmentation of humans and augmentation of machines are studied and fostered.

We are exploring the possibility of new relations of humankind with the Planet and, since the two are strongly related, of humankind with humankind. As in any major change and evolution the questions are more important than the answers, and it is crucial to come up with these new questions to steer the evolution.

To look into this changing landscape the Initiative has initiated a Delphi exercise. If you are willing to participate click here, – you are welcome to participate and contribute. A number of experts from many disciplines have joined the exercise and the evaluation of their answers will be disseminated in November 2018. A first presentation of results will occur at TTM and the SAS workshop, San Diego October 30-November 1st – be there!

Take a look at this clip of Dr. Michio Kaku discussing the genetic ingredients of intelligence. That will be the starting point for my next post in this series.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.