Intelligence

 

I adore Nick Rhodes. He’s not my favourite member of Duran Duran—that honour belongs to the father of my unborn children—but in truth I would adore Nick even if he wasn’t in the band. I find him alternately insightful and hilarious. It’s been clear from the beginning that he’s highly intelligent ... but on finding this quote, I was initially compelled to disagree with him.

At first glance, I’d have said that intelligence is often too easily insulted. Intelligence is the scorekeeper, the entity who judges status and determines the hierarchy. Intelligence, if given any authority, can become, depending on one’s nature, nurturing, condescending, patronizing, oppressive, suppressive or, at worst, despotic.

Unless he’s referring to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is less about being right or being in control than it is about being open-minded and accepting of other opinions. Emotional intelligence allows for debate between opposing views, and for proponents of either side to remain friends in the event of a draw. Emotional intelligence ensures that criticism, whether given or received, is less crushing than constructive.

I know intelligent people who wield their smarts like a weapon designed to show their superiority. I know people whose intelligence is applied to fostering their own poor self-esteem. I also know intelligent people who think of themselves less (rather than less of themselves) than they think of others. In any of those categories, only one seems to fit the notion of intelligence being insulted.

So now I think Nick might be right. Intelligence itself is actually a neutral force. Neither proud nor humble, intelligence does not tell us how or where to use it. I’ve been confusing intelligence with ego!

D-oh!

Artificial Intelligence

For most of my life, I have been irrationally (really?) freaked out about robots. I can’t say when or how it started, but I am so anti-droid that:

I refuse to entertain the notion of investing in a robotic vacuum cleaner to make my former house elf’s life easier.

On meeting the new photocopier, I was immediately reminded of Star Trek’s M5 and vehemently warned our office’s tech advisor against unplugging it at source because “it’ll fry you where you stand!”

My favourite Alan Parsons Project album, I, Robot, tells the sorry tale of machines becoming our masters and, gee, who saw that coming?

Any Hollywood attempt to make androids our friends is less believable than any Hollywood attempt to make androids our enemies.

I don’t understand our obsession with making machines smarter than we are, with giving them personalities, or with trusting them to remember their place and to stay in it.

Ironically, a robot may have changed my mind about the inherent evil code-named “artificial intelligence”.

Type “Hitchbot” into any search engine and a plethora of pictures pops up, each of a funky little compilation of parts parked roadside in any number of locations. Developed in Canada and set loose to test the nature of humans when interacting with machines, Hitch travelled across the country, spent time in Europe, and started a journey across the USA which, sadly, ended last week in Philadelphia. In a thicker twist of irony, the amiable little droid was vandalized beyond hope of repair in the city of brotherly love.

Robophobia notwithstanding, I have problems with vandalism against any inanimate object—without the psychoanalysis, it’s a show of disrespect and does nothing to further the argument that humans are a superior species. Programmed though its personality was, Hitchbot was also harmless. Beating it to death was a show of bullying cowardice as much as it was an act of vandalism. Unfortunately, a violent end has—for the moment, at least—eclipsed all those good folks who drove it from town to town, pausing for photo ops with their kids in front of national landmarks. It’s kinda sad that I only learned about the ʼbot’s adventure when it was over, and sadder still that it was only news because it ended with an act of mindless savagery.

Intelligence? I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who are faking it.