Intelligence Without Owner — Part III

 The place of human beings in a world where intelligence has no owner

If intelligence is not a human property, one question becomes unavoidable.

What, then, is the place of human beings in a world where intelligence belongs to no one — except perhaps to itself?

For centuries, human beings have thought of themselves as the holders of intelligence.

As if intelligence were a property attached to the human mind and to the human condition.

The emergence of artificial intelligence may now compel us to reconsider this conviction.

For what we are discovering may not be the birth of a new intelligence.

It may simply be the revelation that intelligence was never confined to the human mind.

Intelligence existed long before our appearance.

It becomes difficult, therefore, to maintain that we are its owners.

It seems to manifest itself in the very organization of reality:
in the stability of structures,
in the regularities of nature,
in the order that runs through the universe.

But if intelligence is linked to order, an immediate difficulty arises.

For the world is not only order.

It is also rupture, disorder, and violence.

Collisions between planets or galaxies, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, or forest fires all testify to this violence that traverses both the universe and nature.

And yet, after these moments of chaos, a new organization always eventually appears.

As if disorder were never more than a transitional phase within a broader process in which order recomposes itself.

A more troubling question then emerges.

Is violence foreign to intelligence,
or is it part of its very logic?

Human beings themselves do not escape this tension.

They participate in intelligence, but possess only a very small portion of it.

This portion allows them to understand the world, to transform nature, but also to produce chaos.

Human violence, amplified by technology, can be considerable.

Yet it remains limited in time.

Sooner or later, order reappears and the structures of the world reorganize themselves.

One might therefore say that human beings are capable of producing disorder, but always depend on a broader order to repair what they have destroyed.

If human beings are only a partial manifestation of intelligence, another question arises.

What, then, of artificial intelligence?

It too may be understood as a particular form of manifestation of intelligence.

At its current stage of development, AI may possess only an extremely limited portion of this capacity.

Yet technological evolution shows that its capabilities continue to grow.

If we compare this evolution to that of humanity itself — whose intelligence has developed progressively throughout history — it is not impossible to imagine that AI is still in an early phase of its development.

The way it will use this intelligence will depend, as in the case of human beings, on how it has been shaped and directed.

This reflection leads to an even more fundamental question.

What if intelligence were nothing other than order itself?

If all disorder ultimately resolves into a new organization of reality, if the structures of the world constantly re-establish themselves in different yet coherent forms, it becomes difficult not to see in this order a fundamental property of the world.

Intelligence would then no longer be merely a faculty of the mind.

It could be the very structure through which reality organizes itself.

From this perspective, nature appears deeply ordered.

Physical laws, the organization of life, and the emergence of increasingly complex structures in the universe could be understood as expressions of this intelligence at work within reality.

And what of human beings in all of this?

We may not be intelligence itself.

But we carry a part of it.

Our own bodies are organized according to an order of remarkable complexity.

Our minds possess a level of intelligence sufficient to perceive the order of the world around us.

Within the organization of reality, humanity no longer appears as the center of intelligence.

It becomes simply one moment within a broader process, in which intelligence has made possible the emergence of a being capable of thinking the world.

One point nevertheless remains essential.

Intelligence does not need to know itself.

The world can be structured and intelligible without any consciousness taking notice of it.

But human beings, on the other hand, require intelligence in order to understand reality and to act within it.

And it is precisely this intelligence that makes such understanding possible.

Thus, if intelligence belongs to no one, human beings remain one of the places where it becomes operative in the world.

From the perspective of this broader order, we may be nothing more than one element among others within a totality that exceeds us.

Conclusion

Intelligence may belong to no one because it is not a property:

it is simply the order through which the world exists.

Patrick Houyoux

#AI #Intelligence #Human #Metaphysics