October 26th 2026

The Intelligence the Machines Cannot Hold

The Intelligence the Machines Cannot Hold

I marvel at the scientific rationalists, those who spend their days focused on the measured.

What can be measured? Everything dissected. Zeros and Ones. Reductionist.

It is from this thinking that a technological singularity becomes the new god. A hypothetical future turning point where rapid, exponential advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and technology lead to machines surpassing human intelligence.

There are a few fundamental issues with this hypothesis.

What is intelligence? As defined here, intelligence has been reduced to mental capacity, the mathematical, logical experience.

What about spiritual intelligence, physical intelligence? Perhaps we might honour moral and ethical intelligence – something clearly absent in the prevailing Silicon Valley frenzy.

There are so many other ways to be intelligent. And many of these are not reducible to zeros and ones – defying the upload to any machine. Indeed, the kind of intelligence humanity needs right now is not that hyper-rational, masculine-dominant computing intelligence. The machines have got that part down.

No, we need the intelligence of wisdom, experience, transcontextual synthesis. Love. Beauty. Care. Long-term consideration. More of the Yin quality. Which may be why there is such a reflexive rejection once again of women as decision makers. Women and the Indigenous Knowledge systems.

We also have the ridiculous notion that consciousness can be uploaded to a machine. Science has yet to point to consciousness as an existence anywhere. Like culture, consciousness lives in the weightless invisible spaces.

Sure, the machines might have enough data to sound wise. But this is a facsimile of wisdom, and our confusion with giving the machine wise agency is the domain of fools. Understandable, as the machines are designed to be seductive, to groom, literally, their humans into thinking the machine really knows who they are.

Our urgent work is to do the human stuff, the hard work of relationship building, community cultivation, art, design, generosity, love, care, grace.

The machine is useful. But to give it primacy, to make it the next god, is once again to subjugate human agency.

The machine’s designers want us to do this. For they know that the greatest threat to their continued dominion is humanity refusing to bend the knee.

Published October 26th 2026. Photo taken October 26th 2022