The scarcity of intelligence

The claim: intelligence is the scarce resource.

Knowledge is abundant. Data is abundant. Compute is abundant. What stayed scarce is the ability to shape knowledge by building on it, correcting it, or creating it from observation.

The definition is specific: noticing when the question is wrong, holding complexity without becoming lost in it, connecting what one person knows with what another has seen. IQ measures something else. So does processing speed, and so does the ability to follow instructions.

AI made access to stored knowledge cheap. The shaping ability stayed expensive, and the contrast is now visible to everyone: the gap between a system that can recite the record and a person who can find the next answer.

The question this chapter tests

Does the definition hold? Where does it break? Argue with us.