[Visual: A man in a suit is seen from behind, walking through a modern building.] [Visual: The man turns and walks toward the camera.] Sönke Ahrens: My name is Sönke Ahrens. I'm an independent researcher and author of How to Take Smart Notes, Experiment and Exploration, and hopefully some other books coming soon. --- [Visual: A caption appears: Sönke Ahrens, Author of How to Take Smart Notes.] Sönke Ahrens: As for the question of what makes human intelligence unique and powerful, I think it's important to remember that human intelligence is rooted in human experience. [Visual: A low-angle shot of people's legs walking on a paved sidewalk.] [Visual: An overhead shot of a crowd of people walking, silhouetted by a bright light.] Sönke Ahrens: So maybe it isn't so much about what a single brain can compute. What is a human brain without its connection to other human brains? [Visual: People walk past a modern building with large glass windows.] Sönke Ahrens: Maybe it's therefore not so much about being especially unique or especially powerful, but about the question, what makes human intelligence human? And that is the common human experience. [Visual: A close-up of a newborn baby's face.] [Visual: Vintage home video footage shows a family playing in a yard.] [Visual: A man rock climbing.] [Visual: Two people on a snowy mountain peak.] Sönke Ahrens: That is the sharing of interest, of curiosity, about goals, shared interest of being in the world. --- [Visual: Sönke Ahrens rests his chin on his hand.] Sönke Ahrens: In terms of the future of human intelligence, I think a lot depends on how we cultivate the shared spaces we think in together. [Visual: A camera moves down an aisle in a library between tall bookshelves.] Sönke Ahrens: Because human intelligence flourishes in good company. [Visual: A group of young people review a script together.] [Visual: A diverse team of four people brainstorms at a glass wall, with one woman writing on it.] Sönke Ahrens: Common spaces where human intelligence can flourish need to be set up. They are not just there. And they need freedom to speak, to come up with unique ideas. [Visual: A person reads a book about chess strategy.] [Visual: A person fills in bubbles on a multiple-choice test sheet with a pencil.] Sönke Ahrens: But seemingly paradoxically, they also need high barriers of entry. They need ways of exclusion. Science is maybe the best example of a shared space where human intelligence can flourish. [Visual: Two scientists in protective gear work in a sterile lab.] Sönke Ahrens: And science is not only shaped by the refusal to accept authoritative claims on the truth and being free of censorship, but at the same time of having rules in place to exclude voices and people. So science was only able to flourish the way it did because we excluded a lot of people. --- Sönke Ahrens: So when you think about your last conversation you had with a group of highly intelligent people, you probably felt energized, smarter by just participating in that conversation. And now compare that to the experience of spending time in the comment section of Facebook. [Visual: A vintage computer monitor on a desk in a red-lit room.] [Visual: The word "Facebook" types out in a dot-matrix style on a black screen.] [Visual: A man in a dark room looks at his phone while a silhouette of him using a phone is projected on the wall.] Sönke Ahrens: There are no exclusion mechanisms. Everyone can speak. And you probably felt a little bit dumber afterwards, because there is no way of excluding bad faith actors, people who have no idea what what they're talking about, etc. [Visual: An overhead shot of children sitting at desks in a classroom, writing.] [Visual: A close-up of a child's hand writing in a notebook.] [Visual: A teacher and a group of children watch a science experiment with dry ice on a table.] Sönke Ahrens: And it's easy to speak about freedom of speech and being free of censorship. But it's much more difficult to come up with rules of who to exclude and who to focus on. But without that, you won't have the space where human intelligence can really flourish. So I think we need to think about that a little bit more. --- Sönke Ahrens: Turning outwards, being interested in the world is what human intelligence is all about. [Visual: A person looks up at a dark blue night sky.] [Visual: A view looking up through silhouetted trees at a starry night sky.] Sönke Ahrens: It's about the curiosity of what is out there, what is not yet discovered, not yet understood. If we look for comparison to what computers can do, we make ourselves smaller than we are. When we look outwards and focus on things we haven't yet understood, instead of comparing ourselves, we expand what we are as human intelligent beings. [Visual: A person looks at a rocket launching into the sunset sky.] [Visual: A young boy looks up at a cloudy sky.] Sönke Ahrens: I think the whole question of comparing ourselves is further complicated by the fact that we have really nothing to compare ourselves with. In earlier times, we tended to compare ourselves to God, and nowadays, we are much more inclined to compare ourselves to computers. [Visual: A dark, forested valley at sunset.] [Visual: A foggy canyon with a river running through it.] [Visual: A messy desk with two vintage computers.] [Visual: A digital graphic of a human brain, with one half becoming a circuit board.] Sönke Ahrens: We think of our brain as a CPU with a hard drive for long-term memory and a working memory as a short-term memory. And now we have AI we compare ourselves with. But AI is built on large language models. And humans are much more built on experience. So maybe it's not a good idea to keep comparing ourselves to the tools we've just invented, but to focus on what makes humans human. --- [Visual: A woman selects a book from a shelf in a large, warmly lit library.] [Visual: The woman flips through the book.] [Visual: An overhead shot of books, a magnifying glass, and a cup of tea on a desk.] [Visual: The woman sits on the floor of the library, reading.] Sönke Ahrens: I'm often asked what's special about human intelligence compared to artificial intelligence. This is not a question that concerns me. I think there is a lot of concern we should have with what artificial intelligence could do to society, and we should worry about unintentional consequences, maybe even intentional consequences from problematic actors. [Visual: Two engineers work on a humanoid robot in a lab.] Sönke Ahrens: But we shouldn't be worried about being thrown from the throne of being the most intelligent entity on the planet. I don't think AI would be able to do a lot without all the human experience that went into it, or the human knowledge that went into it. But humans were able to come up with something like AI. And that's pretty powerful, isn't it? --- [Visual: The reMarkable logo appears on a black screen.]