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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has recently been discussing “artificial general intelligence” that matches or surpasses human capabilities. This is from the same person who has said children born today (including his own) will “never be more intelligent than AI, from a ‘raw IQ’” (intelligence quotient) perspective.
United States President Donald Trump has also recently mused about who is and who is not “high IQ.”
As a scholar rooted in the history of Canadian higher education and its intersections with rhetoric around disability and race, every time I hear the word “intelligence,” including as “IQ,” I get jumpy. “Intelligence” clearly has a high-stakes and worrisome future, but also a dark history.
To figure out what AI might be replacing, we need to better understand intelligence as a historically situated idea — and a dangerous one — rather than as some sort of biological fact.
For universities, this reflection matters as institutions confront questions about how their responses to AI align with their missions.
‘Intelligence’ and eugenics
In the early 20th century, universities, university disciplines and academic careers were built by...