Pioneering Polyintelligence

Polyintelligence
by Noubar Afeyan

“Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.”

These observations from Leonardo da Vinci are powerfully reinforced in Ken Burns’ Leonardo da Vinci, a documentary on PBS that captured my attention and led me to ponder the notions of knowledge and intelligence. This deep dive into the life and history of the quintessential “Renaissance man” showcases not only his genius but also his obsession with nature. Though he lacked formal education, his innate curiosity drove him toward a constant, intensive observation of the world around him. Nothing escaped his interest: water, soil, birds, human social behavior. Nature was his teacher, guide, and inspiration.

Leonardo’s appetite for learning was wide-ranging but not scattered. What seemed to fascinate him most was not simply mastery of discrete domains, but the interconnection among disciplines. His holistic, integrated approach to analyzing the human body, designing machines, observing water, and painting enabled him to produce work that was greater than the sum of its parts — work that inspires awe even centuries later.

The term polymath is fitting for his unique intellect: someone with insatiable curiosity, a capacity to synthesize information from diverse areas, and a knack for connecting seemingly unrelated concepts to create groundbreaking ideas. Polymath seems to only suitably describe human intelligence, but if Leonardo teaches anything, it is that nature is intelligent, too, providing a wellspring of innovation and wisdom.

With the rise of artificial (machine) intelligence, we are entering a new chapter — a synthesis of human, machine, and nature’s intelligence. This synthesis, which I term polyintelligence, represents the emergence of a modern-day renaissance: one in which human intelligence and nature’s intelligence will adapt to integrate and co-exist with artificial intelligence, human intelligence and artificial intelligence will inform and be informed by nature’s capacity for problem solving, and machine intelligence will decode nature to serve up solutions to allow humans to thrive. Polyintelligence powerfully combines human creativity and imagination, nature’s adaptive genius, and the reach, scale, and speed of machine intelligence.