intelligence
noun
in·tel·li·gence in-ˈte-lə-jən(t)sa:The ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations : REASON
studies of human and animal intelligence
a person of average intelligence
b:
Mental acuteness : CLEVERNESS
was impressed by the candidate's intelligence
… his flights of taste and his experimentation are based on intelligence, knowledge, and training, not on slapdash hits and misses …— Fred Ferretti
Their vividly colored feathers and intelligence are a draw to those seeking a less conventional pet than a dog or cat.— Hannah Fry
Above, you can read the first couple of entries in the online version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of the word "intelligence."
I looked up the word just to check my own understanding, after reading an article in the Friday, July 3, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. That article, by Richard Dooling, an American novelist and screenwriter, was titled, "AI And The English Language," and the article focused on what George Orwell had to say about "Politics And The English Language."
I am told that even non-subscribers to The Wall Street Journal should be able to read the entirety of Dooling's article, by using the link I have provided, but the excerpt below gives the gist, and is what caught my attention:
George Orwell closed his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” with six rules for writers, the first of which commands: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” It is the rule against clichés—don’t beat dead horses, cry over spilled milk or freeze like a deer in the headlights....
Orwell wasn’t merely arguing against tired language; he was calling on his fellow English speakers to be clear and sincere. To “let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.” Find the image that conveys your meaning and resist the borrowed phrase, because “every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.”
Train AI models on 10,000 war memoirs if you like, but they still won’t be able to take to the editorial page the day after Hiroshima. They can’t address a crowd after a tragedy or bear witness to the joys of raising a child. To do that takes humans able to express themselves without reaching for the nearest cliché (emphasis added).
The same day, writing in The New York Times, one of my favorite people, Zeynep Tufekci, pretty much said the same thing. Her opinion column in The Times (click this link for her column) was titled as follows in the hardcopy version: "Are You A Human? Congratulations. You're Irreplaceable." Online, the title was a bit different: "The Unstoppable Force Of A.I. Hype Is Meeting One Immovable Fact."
Tufekci agrees with Dooling (and George Orwell), ending up her column with the following assertion: "Generative A.I. as it currently exists cannot easily replace human beings, because it cannot manifest human intelligence."
My own assertion? There isn't any such thing as "artificial" intelligence. Intelligence is something that human beings (and other living beings) may (or may not) possess and/or display, but what is now being called "artificial" intelligence isn't "intelligence" at all. The entire idea that our own creations will "replace" us, or will "exceed" us, somehow, is a symptom of our loss of faith in our own abilities (at the very time when what we are calling "artificial intelligence" is providing such a powerful evidence of our own "intelligence," our own ability to "learn and understand," and a manifestation of our "cleverness."
WE (human beings) can "do anything." Anything we can think of, when we work hard to translate our thoughts and visions into reality, can be accomplished. I like to say that "possibility" is "my category."
It's actually OUR category - our category as human beings!
World peace? An end to homelessness? Our ability to reverse (even now, late in the game) the spiraling out of control, runaway global warming that is threatening all life on Earth?
All our best hopes and ideas (and all our most dreaded fears and discouragements), will depend on what we DO! Our ability to envision and then create? That's the kind of "cleverness" that isn't going to pop out of a computer.
But you can't create, you can't change the world, unless you think and believe you can. Let's not disempower ourselves, ok?
Think we all might get behind that proposition? Maybe not everyone. What about YOU?
Count me in on that idea. I remember as a child I heard the story of a girl who was imprisoned in a concentration camp. All of a sudden she came to the strong realization that she was actually absolutely free. She walked right through the front gates and away from the camp with no one stopping her. I’ve always remembered that. It’s hard to get to that place but I think more and more people are beginning to want a change of perspective on the purpose of their lives and to realize it’s an internal choice to create the world they want to live in.
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