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Try to read the definitions of intelligence in front of you, keeping in mind that they were written in different periods and by scientists with very different perspectives: from biologists to psychologists, from engineers to computer scientists.
At the beginning of the last century, for example, the psychologists and educators Binet and Simon emphasized “good sense” and the ability to adapt to circumstances.
Later scholars both expanded and made this definition more concrete: for psychologists such as Gottfredson and Sternberg, intelligence is a complex mental ability that goes beyond simple adaptation. It involves a deep understanding of the world around us, on the basis of which we then build our ability to adapt to different environments in order to achieve our goals.
If we move into the fields of engineering and computer science, authors such as Albus, or Legg and Hutter, strip intelligence of any biological constraints. Performance is what matters: intelligence is the ability of an “agent” to achieve goals by maximizing the probability of success, regardless of the “tricks” hidden inside its skull or its silicon circuitry.
These definitions differ in some respects, but most of them converge on the ideas of understanding the world and being flexible in achieving one’s goals.
This is precisely the synthesis proposed by Paolo Cherubini: intelligence can be seen as the ability of an agent (whether living or not—that is not the point) to achieve its goals in uncertain and changing environments, based on an understanding of the world that allows it to anticipate the future. This understanding is not fixed, but fluid—it evolves, enabling the agent to overcome even unexpected obstacles.
In a sense, intelligence may be both the helmsman guiding us toward our goals and the cartographer who has drawn the map of the world on which we chart our course.