Is human intelligence losing its meaning?
In the past, pearls were extremely scarce. Finding pearls was a difficult job. Divers had to dive into oceans or lakes to gather mussels or oysters. They either didn't have any diving equipment or used very basic tools. They had to free-dive into deep water, gather as many mussels as they could in one breath, and come to the surface. It was a lot of guesswork, unpredictable and even risky for the divers.
As a result, pearls were very expensive. Only the richest could afford them.
Then, we learned how to cultivate pearls. It wasn't as difficult to get pearls as it used to be. Pearls became more accessible to "normal" people, and the price of pearls dropped accordingly.
Most of the value of pearls didn't come from the pearls themselves. It came from the meaning we gave to them. People paid for the difficulty and hard work it demanded to gather them.
The same applies to thinking, intelligence, and art, in my opinion. Until now, it was difficult to create intellectual work and art. Now, it is not, because of artificial intelligence. Tools can create well-written texts and produce artwork that looks and sounds appealing to the eyes and ears of those who are not deep into fine art or music.
Actually, I have found myself listening to jazz music made by AI quite often recently. I am not a jazz expert, but I still could spot some errors in the text and melody. Even with these errors, I found the music nice to listen to.
But the question is, will the advancement of AI tools make human intelligence obsolete? By human intelligence, I do not mean the elite-level intelligence of geniuses who can create world-class works. My question more concerns the everyday intelligence that normal people like us possess.
I don't believe so. Because of the meaning. Without that meaning, they are only a few bits of data or some words and colors on a piece of paper.
They are valuable because of the meaning we choose to give them. We like to read or hear work that is made by a natural intelligence. It has a meaning to us because it is genuine, because we are curious to see how other human beings experience and see life.