Same question. I don't think there's a universal definition of superintelligence.
Just to add some food for thought:
Is superintelligence simply a very high IQ, a higher than top humans one? If so, we'd need a way to measure that, since existing IQ tests are designed for human intelligence. Or is superintelligence about scale/order-of-magnitude: many high-IQ minds working together? That would imply a different kind of threshold. But perhaps the key idea is that superintelligence is inherently uncapped, that is once we reach a level we consider "superintelligent" we can still imagine something even more advanced that fits the same label.
I define it as smarter than humans. The same way a dog will never understand L'Hôpital's rule, there are probably things that human beings will never understand but future AIs will. I'd call those AIs superintelligent.
It is worth emphasizing that dogs wouldn't understand formal calculus even if they were smarter than humans! They are not physiologically capable of doing formal mathematics:
- their eyesight is too poor to read
- their paws are not designed for fine manipulations so they cannot write or type
- their throats and mouths are not nearly as nimble as ours, so they cannot vocally communicate detailed information
Even if there was an Newton-level dog, they wouldn't be able to access the ideas of an earlier Euclid-level dog. Human knowledge is not just about our big brains, we've developed many physical features that make transmission of information far easier than other species.
OTOH dogs do have a good intuitive "common-sense" understanding of arithmetic, geometry, and physics. It is the unique gift of humans that we can formalize and then extend this intuition, but this ability (and intelligence as a whole) relies on nonverbal common sense.
The big difference with Stephen Hawking is that he was not born disabled, he became disabled during graduate school. Even in 2025, a human who is born blind and severely paralyzed (so they cannot speak or sign) will probably never learn calculus, regardless of innate ability. Perhaps in the medium term technology will improve.
That said, another major difference is psychology. Switching animals, it seems plausible to me that chimpanzees are theoretically capable of doing basic calculus as a matter of pattern-matching. But you can't force them to study it! Basic calculus is too tedious and high-effort to learn for a mere banana, you need something truly valuable like "guaranteed admission to the flagship state university" for human children to do it. But we don't have an equivalent offer for chimps. (Likewise an Isaac Newton - level dog might still find calculus exceptionally boring compared to chasing squirrels.)
> It is worth emphasizing that dogs wouldn't understand formal calculus even if they were smarter than humans!
Exactly! If a dog invented a dog superintelligence and it discovered calculus, the dogs would never understand that discovery. I think a superintelligence we build will discover things we cannot understand.
No, you totally misunderstood my point. Formal calculus is not a physical fact of the
universe, it is an abstract human tool that other species (including dogs) are not capable of using, just like they can't use hammers or drive cars. The problem is not a lack of intelligence, it's having the wrong body.
I think it’s too easy to get anthropocentric and 1D about intelligence. That dog understands things about the world, important things, that mere humans like Bernoulli could never even dream of.
