Steven Pinker: 'Superintelligence is meaningless' — there is no day we suddenly have it

‘The power will increase, but there's no point at which it's meaningful to say … Today we do have super intelligence’

EXCERPT

PINKER: "really, uh, possible to achieve super intelligence by AI? Um, the, I think super intelligence is meaningless. Meaningless? Yeah. It's incoherent, I heard you say, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. What do you mean by it? Well, w- what do you mean? I mean, I can't, uh, uh, you, you- When I say- ... you brought up the term, so I can't s- Yes, super intelligence ... I can't say, I can't say what someone else's term, which is not defined. Yeah. Uh. So the, the, the biggest, uh, names in the industry are suggesting that we will have an intelligence that can, um, create, uh, on its own without any human surveillance. That, create what on its own? Create, uh, other things, other intelligence, uh, by itself and pr- uh, improve itself. But things, there's, there's a lot of things, that is, the power will increase, but there's no point at which it's meaningful to say, "Well, yesterday we didn't have super intelligence. Today we do have super intelligence." I see. That's why I think it's meaningless. To say, "Well, what will happen if one day we have super intelligence?" I, I don't f- I don't even understand the question. It's, will the technology improve? Almost certainly. Uh, so it'll get, it'll, it'll get better. Uh, it'll never be, um, o- omniscient. Uh, it'll never be omnipotent. That's a- Yeah, perhaps this is the, the thing. That, that's, that, that, that's, uh, um, out of, you know, comic books, out of, out of religion. That's, uh- Mm ... um, uh, there are laws of physics. There's, uh, limits on information. There, there is no system that could learn the position and velocity of every particle in the, in the universe. So as long as that is true, then there's not going to be an AI system that can do anything, that can know everything."

Source: sapinker · Sep 27, 2026 · 94s clip