Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are vastly different.

 Dear Editor,  (Washington Post) 

Rina Bliss is a credible source regarding ‘Rethinking Intelligence’ (her book title).   But in her Op-ed, “AI Can’t teach children to learn. What’s missing” (4-13-23) she misses the ultimate value of human learning and intelligence.  Human intelligence is failing to ensure humanity's sustainability, thriving, and maybe even our future survival. 

She is correct in saying human intelligence is massively different than computational intelligence.  But the human mind is also profoundly flawed.  It is limited by a variety of factors most people ignore or refuse to change.  First, we can believe anything!  And then easily forget what we know or what we need to do.  We grossly misinterpret reality by relying solely on our limited sensory input and human experience. Our five senses are further limited by our mind’s adoption of personal, religious, political, or cultural perspectives inconsistent with self-evident truths like 'all people are created equal'.   Meanwhile, AI gains information exponentially, storing it in mass beyond our comprehension, and possesses almost immediate retrieval and organizing capacity.  Its advantages (or threats) are barely comprehensible via human intelligence. 

Before AI humanity had all the information and intelligence we needed to prevent or solve most of our global problems and threats.  But not asteroids.  We simply lack the wisdom or the will to apply “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” to our own laws.  Laws that are needed to best ensure our species' most fruitful and sustainable future. AI confirms this!  Ask ChatGPT for a comprehensive plan that humanity already has to sustainably maximize human freedom and security.   It offers the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Multiple bi-partisan Presidential, House, and Senate commissions backed by the National Academy of Science studies, and even DOD and US intelligence agency reports for the past 4 decades have warned us about and offered affordable solutions.  Collectively these are referred to by those who read them as “Dust Collectors”.  The only thing missing has been “the political will”...to do what needed to be done.  Human and Artificial intelligence combined is insufficient motivation to apply the wisdom of the ages from indigenous cultures and rational Western concepts.   Our mind evolved to solve problems. Yet its flawed concepts like independence, unbridled freedoms, and majority rule only perpetuate wars, genocides, pandemics, environmental deterioration, and dysfunctional governments.    

Chuck Woolery

Rockville, MD