What Is Intelligence?
What Is Intelligence? by Blaise Aguera y Arcas is one of 2026's most credible books, appearing on 1 of the year's most respected lists, including Bloomberg, for a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100.
Appears on these lists
Our take
AI-draftedAguera y Arcas, a Google AI researcher, makes a case that intelligence is fundamentally a predictive computational process rather than something tied to biology or human exceptionalism — a claim broad enough to sweep in evolution, consciousness, and the physics of time. Several critics have pushed back specifically on how far he stretches intelligence as a category before the word starts to lose meaning.
In the press
“Agüera y Arcas comes across as a deeply considerate scholar, excited about advances in AI technology, but with deep understanding of its proper place in human history”
Los Angeles Review of Books
How the Consensus Score is calculated
Our Consensus Score is our own transparent editorial metric — not a user rating. It weighs each list by the credibility of its source, how recent the listing is, and any award status. Here is the full breakdown.
| Source | Authority | Recency | Award | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloomberg | 0.80 | 0.85 | 1.00× | 0.68 |
| Weighted sum → Score | 0.68 → 15 | |||
Similar consensus books
Because they appear on some of the same lists.
Frequently asked
What lists is What Is Intelligence? on?
What Is Intelligence? appears on 1 list in our 2026 corpus, including Bloomberg.
What is its Consensus Score?
What Is Intelligence? has a Consensus Score of 15 out of 100, our transparent editorial measure of how many credible lists agree on it.