Book Review: 'What is Intelligence?' Fails to Engage with Cognitive Science
A review of Blaise Agüera y Arcas's book 'What is Intelligence?' (MIT Press, 2025) criticizes its reductionist definition of intelligence as prediction, arguing it ignores established cognitive science and linguistics. The reviewer, a cognitive scientist, outlines infant cognitive development and language acquisition to counter Agüera's claims, noting that language is a complex system, not mere sequence learning. The review highlights Agüera's conflation of AI and brain processes, his dismissal of cognitive science, and his failure to distinguish levels of explanation. It points to adversarial attacks as evidence that AI processes differ from human cognition. The book's conclusions are deemed achieved by fiat, lacking principled definition. The review calls for more cognitive science and linguistics in AI discourse.
Key facts
- Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a vice president at Google.
- The book 'What is Intelligence?' is published by MIT Press in 2025, 336 pages, $29.95.
- Agüera argues intelligence is prediction and influence of future via a model.
- He claims intelligence is a feature of all living organisms, machines, and AI.
- The review criticizes the book for ignoring cognitive science and linguistics.
- The reviewer outlines infant cognitive development and language acquisition.
- Adversarial attacks demonstrate AI models can be fooled by perturbations, unlike humans.
- The review concludes the book's conclusions are achieved by fiat, not demonstration.
Entities
Artists
- Blaise Agüera y Arcas
- Geoffrey Hinton
- Elizabeth Spelke
- David Marr
- Alan Turing
- John von Neumann
Institutions
- MIT Press