I’m looking at commentary about the risks of artificial intelligence – and I think we have to look at the bell curve before we can begin to debate the issue. This distribution curve, and the comments below it, provides that background.
Obviously, it isn’t a great challenge for AI to surpass the bottom 2% – shown as IQ 70 and below. Perhaps it is a challenge (or perhaps not) for AI to surpass the “average” range (85 to 115). As we move further onto the right hand of the bell curve, the challenge to AI, like the challenge to the individual human, increases.
This chart, from the IQ comparison site, gives an idea of the IQ score that it takes for specfic jobs (note that it’s a range, usually about three standard deviations, and it tops at 130:
I like the 130 IQ score – basically 2% of the population scores 130 or higher. Taken at random, that’s one out of fifty. An IQ score of 130 is not rare. On the other hand, I’m not sure that folks who score 130 have any more to fear from Artificial Intelligence than from the half of the human population that scores at 100 and below.
So let’s look at the people who need to fear AI. First of all, IQ isn’t everything – I’m using it as a proxy for intelligence, creativity, and heaven knows what else. But it is a proxy that has been used with a high degree of consistency for over a century. I have scored high and done some dumb things – I know it is not the total measure. But let’s look at the left hand edge of those occupations.
I think that the professor whose IQ score doesn’t make 100 may have reason to worry about AI. On the other hand, I’ve dealt with enough low IQ profs to know that they had political skills that exceeded mine. Intelligence is not the only place we compete.
One of the brightest students I encountered at Lincoln County Campus (when retraining people displaced by the sawmill closure) had never made it off the green chain. Closing the mill just forced him onto a different path – probably a better one for him.
I think that AI is the greatest threat to midwits – but we live in a system where midwits flourish. The quality of decisions made by public health professionals during covid amply illustrates this. There’s a lot of difference between John Snow’s removal of the pump handle to stop a Cholera epidemic and the political skills of Anthony Fauci.
I’m guessing that, if you’re on the left hand edge of your profession, AI may be a threat to you. On the other hand, life experience tells me that political skills seem to trump intelligence regularly. I just can’t see AI beating institutional politics. Midwits, not the intelligent, run the world.
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