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Forbes
4 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
Skeptical Intelligence Is Crucial In The Age Of AI
Skeptical Intelligence In boardrooms, strategy offsites, and investor summits, the conversation invariably turns to artificial intelligence. Will it take our jobs, supercharge our growth, or expose hidden risks we've never anticipated? Amid the hype, one truth emerges: in a world awash with machine-generated insights, the uniquely human ability to question, probe, and test assumptions—what we might call Skeptical Intelligence—could be our most indispensable asset. Yet despite billions spent annually on leadership development, few executives can precisely define what it means to think skeptically, let alone how to develop it. To understand why Skeptical Intelligence deserves a seat alongside IQ and Emotional Intelligence, we need to revisit how these earlier concepts reshaped our understanding of human capability—and then explore what a third pillar might entail. The Age of IQ For much of the 20th century, intelligence meant only one thing: IQ. It was the gold standard, the quantifiable metric by which students were sorted, employees were promoted, and national rankings were compared. The concept of general intelligence originated with Charles Spearman in 1904, who observed that individuals who performed well on one type of cognitive test tended to do well on others. This statistical correlation suggested a broad, underlying mental capacity. Alfred Binet in France and later Lewis Terman at Stanford created IQ tests that could numerically represent this capacity, leading to the IQ boom of the 20th century. IQ proved remarkably good at predicting certain kinds of success: academic performance, logical problem-solving, and even long-term earnings. But by the 1980s, cracks began to appear. Why did some top scorers flounder in the real world while others with merely average IQs thrived? The Rise of Emotional Intelligence The first serious challenge came from Howard Gardner, whose 1983 book Frames of Mind introduced the theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner argued that musical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences were just as real and valuable as linguistic or logical-mathematical skills. This pluralistic view was controversial but set the stage for even more focused alternatives. In 1990, two psychologists, Peter Salovey and John Mayer, proposed the concept of Emotional Intelligence. They defined it as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions effectively. In their view, emotions were not a distraction from rational thinking but a vital component of it. But it was Daniel Goleman who truly ignited the global conversation. His 1995 bestseller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ argued that self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills often trump raw cognitive horsepower in leadership and life. Goleman's work popularized the idea that a high EQ could distinguish great leaders from merely smart ones. Corporations embraced the concept eagerly. Emotional intelligence trainings became standard fare in leadership programs at GE, IBM, and Goldman Sachs. Consulting firms created entire practices around measuring and developing EQ. And yet even with these advances, the dominant paradigm still focused on how well we feel and connect—not necessarily how well we question. Enter Skeptical Intelligence In the last few years, a new concern has emerged. As machine learning systems become capable of astonishing feats—drafting legal briefs, diagnosing diseases, predicting consumer churn—our natural tendency is to trust them. Algorithms, after all, seem less biased, less emotional, more data-driven than we are. But recent high-profile failures—facial recognition systems that couldn't recognize dark-skinned faces, loan algorithms that penalized women, language models that hallucinate references—have underscored that AI can be deeply flawed. And these flaws are often subtle, buried inside complex statistical models that even their creators struggle to fully interpret. The result? The need for a new kind of human intelligence: the capacity to critically interrogate the outputs of sophisticated systems. This is where Skeptical Intelligence comes in. Skeptical Intelligence is not the same as mere contrarianism or reflexive doubt. It is a disciplined approach to questioning that combines curiosity, critical thinking, epistemic humility (knowing what you don't know), and a toolkit for evaluating evidence. If IQ is about solving well-defined problems and EQ is about navigating social and emotional landscapes, Skeptical Intelligence is about resisting easy answers and probing beneath the surface—especially when powerful technologies tempt us to outsource our judgment. We can draw on decades of research in critical thinking and cognitive psychology to sketch out its potential components. Scholars like Robert Ennis, Richard Paul, Rita McGrath, Eric Reis, and Linda Elder have long studied what it means to think critically. Their frameworks emphasize abilities such as: In this sense, Skeptical Intelligence can be thought of as a disposition for critical thinking applied rigorously to the modern data and AI landscape. Why We Need Skeptical Intelligence Now Paradoxically, the better AI gets, the more tempting it is to disengage our skeptical faculties. Machine learning models often produce outputs accompanied by confidence scores or impressive-looking graphs, which can lull decision-makers into a false sense of certainty. A 2022 study by Harvard Business School found that managers were significantly more likely to accept flawed AI recommendations if they were presented with visually compelling dashboards—even when inconsistencies were apparent. This is not merely a theoretical risk. Consider the 2020 incident when a widely used recruiting algorithm at a Fortune 500 company was found to downgrade resumes from women because the training data contained historical biases favoring male candidates. Or the series of fintech apps that misclassified minority borrowers as high-risk based on opaque clustering techniques. These failures happened not because executives were malicious or incompetent, but because they lacked sufficient Skeptical Intelligence to interrogate the models. Warren Buffett famously said, 'It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.' In the AI era, it's best to preempt mistakes altogether by cultivating a culture of healthy skepticism. This does not mean ignoring AI insights. Rather, it means creating systems of 'trust but verify'. Leaders high in Skeptical Intelligence know how to ask pointed questions of data scientists and to challenge assumptions without falling into endless analysis paralysis. The Practice of Skeptical Intelligence Imagine a CFO reviewing an AI-driven forecast that predicts a 12% uptick in demand for a new product line. Instead of simply applauding or rubber-stamping the recommendation, the CFO trained in Skeptical Intelligence would ask: Or picture a marketing VP using a generative AI tool to craft campaign messages. Someone with strong Skeptical Intelligence wouldn't just check grammar—they'd probe for embedded stereotypes, test multiple prompts for consistency, and cross-check factual assertions. Skeptical Intelligence also means knowing when to consult outside experts, when to run pilot tests before full-scale rollouts, and when to keep a human in the loop for judgment calls that have ethical or reputational stakes. Building Skeptical Intelligence in organizations How can today's companies cultivate this emerging form of intelligence? Skeptical Intelligence as a Superpower When historians look back at the early decades of the AI revolution, they may marvel at how readily humans deferred to machines—sometimes with spectacular results, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. The leaders who thrive will be those who balanced innovation with interrogation, speed with scrutiny. IQ and EQ remain foundational. But Skeptical Intelligence—the disciplined, curious, humility-infused ability to question even the smartest systems—may prove to be the crown jewel of human capability in the algorithmic age.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Found The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses
Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There's also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of human darkness lies, researchers say. In a 2018 study, psychologists from Germany and Denmark mapped this driving force behind all our darkest impulses and gave it a name. Meet D, the newly identified Dark Factor of Personality. The theoretical framework of the D factor has its underpinnings in what's known as the g factor: a construct proposed by English psychologist Charles Spearman over a century ago when he observed that individuals who performed well on one kind of cognitive test were more likely to score well on other kinds of intelligence tests, too. In other words, a 'general intelligence factor' could be measured. But it turns out that's not all scientists are able to detect. "In the same way, the dark aspects of human personality also have a common denominator, which means that – similar to intelligence – one can say that they are all an expression of the same dispositional tendency," explained psychologist Ingo Zettler from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark back in September 2018. In a series of four separate studies involving over 2,500 participants, Zettler and fellow researchers surveyed participants with questions designed to measure their levels of nine distinct dark personality traits: egoism, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, narcissism, psychological entitlement, psychopathy, sadism, self-interest, and spitefulness. To do so, participants were asked to disagree with a range of variable 'dark' statements, such as: "I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so", "I'll say anything to get what I want", "It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there", and "Hurting people would be exciting". With all the responses in hand, researchers ran a statistical analysis, with the results suggesting that while these dark traits are all distinct, they all overlap to some extent, owing to the central core darkness factor, D, which reveals itself in different ways in different people. "In a given person, the D factor can mostly manifest itself as narcissism, psychopathy or one of the other dark traits, or a combination of these," Zettler said. "But with our mapping of the common denominator of the various dark personality traits, one can simply ascertain that the person has a high D factor. This is because the D factor indicates how likely a person is to engage in behavior associated with one or more of these dark traits." It's pretty provocative stuff, but you don't just have to take the researchers' word for it: You can take the D test yourself. The team set up an online portal where you can measure your own D score via a questionnaire. Why would people want to know? Well, apart from personal curiosity about how dark you really are, the researchers said their findings could one day lead to new discoveries in psychology and therapy, advancing our understanding of how we interpret people's malevolent actions. "We see it, for example, in cases of extreme violence, or rule-breaking, lying, and deception in the corporate or public sectors," Zettler said. "Here, knowledge about a person's D-factor may be a useful tool, for example, to assess the likelihood that the person will re-offend or engage in more harmful behavior." The findings were reported in Psychological Review. An earlier version of this article was published in September 2018. Men's Heights Grew Twice as Much as Women's Last Century, Says Study Airports Have a Strange Effect on Human Behavior. Here's Why. Our Ears Still Try to Swivel Around to Hear Better, Study Discovers
