A Chollet quote reignites the debate over whether intelligence has diminishing returns
binarybits · x · 2026-07-27
In a quote-thread around François Chollet’s line about intelligence, the discussion argues that the benefits of being “smart” are often mixed up with other advantages.
- Raw intelligence tends to correlate with related boosts: strong executive function, social connections, and willingness to take intellectual risks.
- Because of those confounders, it is hard to see whether intelligence itself has sharply diminishing returns.
- Chollet’s quoted view: increasing intelligence is less like making a tower taller and more like making a ball rounder — once it is already close to spherical, extra gains become marginal.
Related event: Chollet: Advancing AI is Like Smoothing a Sphere, Not Building a Tower(2 posts)→
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