“Agüera y Arcas’s book is a mammoth investigation into the computational basis of life and a fascinating exploration of the nature of intelligence…the book is entertaining and thought-provoking.”
The Financial Times
In What Is Intelligence?: Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds, Blaise Agüera y Arcas investigates the nature of intelligence through the lens of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and physics.
Prompted by the performance of large language models, he revisits the “predictive brain” hypothesis, which proposes that brains evolved to anticipate future conditions. He extends this idea beyond neuroscience, arguing that prediction is a defining characteristic of living systems and a useful basis for understanding intelligence across domains.
Agüera y Arcas places contemporary AI within an evolutionary framework.
He examines parallels between neural networks and biological processes such as variation, selection, and adaptation. In his account, intelligence emerges in systems that construct internal models of their environment and update them over time.
This perspective questions the assumption that human cognition and machine computation belong to separate categories, and instead treats them as related expressions of similar underlying processes.
Questions of consciousness and free will receive sustained attention.
The author outlines criteria that could apply to certain advanced AI systems and assesses how those systems compare against established philosophical and scientific definitions. He engages ongoing debates about machine agency and moral status while grounding the discussion in current research.
What Is Intelligence? presents intelligence as a product of evolutionary processes and computational constraints. It provides a sustained argument about how intelligence should be defined and how emerging technologies ought to be evaluated.
The National CIO Review® is a proud supporter of Bookshop.org which connects readers with independent booksellers all over the world. We believe local bookstores are essential community hubs that foster culture, curiosity, and a love of reading, and we’re committed to helping them thrive. Every purchase at Bookshop.org financially supports independent bookstores.
