Can Artificial Intelligence Beget Natural Intelligence?

Can Artificial Intelligence Beget Natural Intelligence? 

I know nothing about Artificial Intelligence (AI), how it works and other related questions. Yet, I dare to ask the question in the heading of this post.

Of course, it is indisputable that it was natural intelligence (NI) that begat AI. Is this a reversible process? Do not bring in thermodynamics here! Please note that I have advisedly used the word beget. I am not talking about enhancing the capabilities of NI. Perhaps AI can enhance NI, but I am not venturing there.

Every living thing has intelligence, and if one were to grade species by the level of intelligence it has, humans as a species (Homo sapiens sapiens) will come in very nearly last among eukaryotes. I have to give at least an empirical instance to substantiate the above claim. Cockroaches. Need I say more?

You would, of course, claim that no cockroach has ever invented AI. My answer to that, so what. Roaches survive through their own and without human intelligence! I will tell you that at the level of human evolution, it is almost inevitable that AI can beget NI. So, why do you credit that inevitability? Perhaps, AI is just an accident!

Yet, you could argue that cockroaches would not even know AI. No. By not knowing what AI is, could cockroaches invent AI? Or its derivatives, say, ChatGPT? No. Then the human species indeed is more intelligent than a cockroach! You could say that. Do I give up?

No. You are measuring intelligence on human devised scale, as a measure of mental acquity.Human intelligence is not a unitary measure, though IQ tests designate it so through a reified measure.

In the book  What is Intelligence, one finds intelligence of eight different kinds, each essay of a different kind among humans; some of them are:”seeing”, “evolutionary”, “infant”, “mathematical”, “traditional music (very particular)” and so on. The essays are compiled from different authors, all academicians and researchers). I read this book nearly thirty years ago.

I also read a science fiction book Ender’s Game, authored by Orson Scott Card in which human kind is endangered by an “insectoid” alien species. The most interesting part of the book, as I understood, was that there was just one mind/brain for the army of these insectoids (one could recall this as parallel to the bees in a hive, their actions coordinated; we do not know yet how they are coordinated and who plans the coordination).

What makes us, human beings, assert that we have superior intelligence as compared to any other species on earth? Arrogance.

I am also able to almost undeniably state that human beings are in a potentially evolutionary a cul-de-sac. To my knowledge no species is capable of exterminating itself, multiple times. No other species have invented an atom bomb, a hydrogen bob, an MIRVs (MultipleIndependently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles) over less than a century. 

Are we intelligent or stupid. I vote for the latter. Occasioned by? Ego/arrogance.

If I take a cue from the above I would be led to concluding that AI could lead to NI, but only of the kind that destructs both AI and NI! So, let alone begetting, AI would lead to extermination of NI, unless we keep that destructive potential of AI beyond the mirage of benefits to human society.

A few unanswered questions I leave you with: 1. Can AI infuse itself into a human brain? In which case the difference between AI and NI becomes trivial! 2. Can development of AI be confined in a bottle? To put it another way, can the profit motive in human brain be totally effaced?

Raghuram Ekambaram