Two Concepts of Intelligence
19th January 2026
The rise and spread of AI brings along endless discussions of what constitutes intelligence. A debate which, even if we limit ourselves to computer science, goes back not just to Weizenbaum’s Eliza, but to Turing and von Neumann.
It is also a debate that technical people should not abandon to others. Scientists and engineers are often wary of philosophizing, preferring problem-solving and action. The risk, however, is to relinquish the discussion to people who do not necessarily understand the technology. Current discussions of AI put this phenomenon on display. A typical example is the definition of intelligence. As I will discuss in this post, in the hope of helping to clarify and focus current debates, the source of many disagreements is that people rely, often implicitly, on two radically different notions of “intelligence.”