There’s an ongoing debate about AI intelligence: some believe it will outsmart humans, while others argue it merely mimics us. I don’t hold a fixed view—I just know AI is incredibly useful, especially tools like ChatGPT, even if we don’t fully understand how they work.
Because AI sits at the forefront of business research, it’s often compared with human and animal intelligence. One example is the “Animal/AI Olympics,” which tests problem-solving across species and AI agents using maze-like tasks in simple 3D environments. Similar tests are used with animals—and even in human neuropsychological assessments.
I experienced this myself after a brain injury, when a neurologist tested my memory and problem-solving through mazes and drawing tasks. While basic navigation is easy, more complex challenges, like manipulating objects or understanding cause and effect, require common sense. These are difficult for less-evolved animals and still extremely hard for even advanced AI.
This is well captured by my mother’s old phrase: “very intelligent, but no sense.”
Intelligence involving higher-level reasoning is often seen as more advanced, yet closer inspection shows that different intelligences have entirely different profiles of skills. One challenge for AI is convincing us it is human-like.
A useful metaphor is the octopus. Octopuses (or octopi) are highly intelligent: they use tools, plan escapes, and adapt to new situations. Their intelligence doesn’t resemble ours, yet it is remarkably effective. Unlike mammals, they have a distributed nervous system one central brain and one in each arm allowing semi-independent action.
Octopus intelligence feels almost alien: efficient, decentralised, and fundamentally unlike human cognition. In this sense, AI may be best understood not as a lesser human mind, but as a genuinely different—almost alien—form of intelligence
AI is difficult to understand not because it evolved on another planet or in some distant galaxy. In a sense, it is an alien—but one that evolved alongside us. We created it deliberately, designing it in the hope that it might give us a glimpse into deeper forms of understanding and intelligence.