Should an American Academy of Human Intelligence counter AI?

By David Stephen 

When electricity was nascent, there were people who were saying that it did not show up in productivity gains or had much value. The same for automobiles, and several technologies in the past.

By the time many of those technologies matured, the naysayers had already produced lots of casualties — people or firms who refused to pivot, taking them at their word.

Can Human Intelligence counter AI?

The assessment to make of any technology is how much it can do in a production cycle. Simply, capability. Now, for those it would displace, what novelty is available in the economy to absorb people elsewhere? Also, what exactly is machine replacing, human motion, or an ability beyond humans — heavy lifting?

If the economy is mature, almost to saturation in the 21st century, where it is not so easy to make entire new industries, to train and hire people at scale, there are capabilities that a machine might have, that could be detrimental to societal balance and survival.

Also, humans have already adjusted to economics. If the price of a quantity is low enough for a good enough quality, chances for commerce there is likelier, even if an acquaintance may have the same product at a higher price.

Competitiveness of machines against human intelligence is an impending unknown, regardless of rights, morality, ethics, empathy or welfare considerations for other humans.

Human Intelligence is extremely excellent, yet the source, the brain, handles other process, including emotions, feelings, regulation of internal signals that it is not possible to solely run intelligence purpose, in the brain, in any minute.

This means that what should be priority for the American Medical Association [AMA], National Medical Association [NMA], American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], American Academy of Family Physicians [AAFP], American Psychological Association [APA], American Psychiatric Association [APA], Society for Neuroscience [SfN] and others is to have an affiliated society for human intelligence, to push forward the possibility for progress for human intelligence, by components and mechanisms in the brain.

Although there is the International Society for Intelligence Research [ISIR]; and there was the 1st International Online Conference on Human Intelligence from March 25–26, 2026, with the theme “Measurement, Theories and Applications of Human Intelligence”; it is almost as though ISIR does not exist and that the IOCHI2026 did not happen, given how they were not significant, amid the emergency that human intelligence might be replaced and they appear as quiet, as weak and as if they have no value to offer.

This means that exploring possibilities for an American Academy of Human Intelligence, dedicated to competitiveness against artificial intelligence, would be pivotal.

Climate Change

When the risk of global warming became more apparent, what did the world do?

Several things, which included new goals of massive reforestation. This means that while it may not just be possible to totally cease the consumption of fossil fuels, it was possible to work from the direction of nature for prevention.

So, forward and backward passes of the effects to things that the scientific method established. If something is changing, what element made it so? If the use of that element is reduced and then a further element [reforestation] is added, could it be possible to hit some mitigation targets?

Now, there is progress and a lot of awareness in both directions, such that even with the extending war in Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz almost completely closed, oil places held steady around $100, in the last month or so, showing the diversion of dependency against oil across purposes.

The effort is not just safety within technology, like electric vehicles, alternative energy and so forth, but safety with nature — reforestation.

What is safety with nature in the era of artificial intelligence? Human intelligence.

Math in AI

There is a recent [June 8, 2026] spotlight in The New York Times, They Spent Years on a Math Problem. Then They Were Scooped by A.I., stating that, “Artificial intelligence is mastering the kinds of projects that have long helped to build the careers of young mathematicians. What does that mean for their future?”

“While A.I. is popularly associated with stumbles in arithmetic (like ChatGPT’s meme-worthy failure to correctly count the number of R’s in the word strawberry), technology companies have poured vast resources into reasoning systems that can solve open math problems. Recent progress has turned into an arms race between A.I. competitors eager to show off machine intelligence through success in a field that is often held up as the pinnacle of human intellect.”

“For the thousands of graduate students in the United States currently envisioning their futures in pure math, and who learn the craft through many of the same skills and problems that A.I. is beginning to master, dire prognostications can be hard to avoid.”

“One way to think about the situation faced by young mathematicians is as a warp-speed version of the automation affecting work in other industries, bringing both opportunities and fears of obsolescence.”

American Academy of Human Intelligence? 

There are so many lay opinions that machines will not replace human intelligence. There is just an assumption that humans are too dominant or have been able to improve things, and that machines will be unable to come close to the prowess of humans.

The problem is that economics has made just a few ranges of intelligence too valuable. Also, human society has pivoted many aspects of processes — social and productivity, to digital.

So, even if a robot cannot navigate the environment or complete simple tasks or maybe machines have what they call jagged intelligence — like incomplete capabilities, machines that can do coding, write, solve math, do analysis, produce reports, show care, form friendships, assists in relationships and so forth, are primed to partition human intelligence ranks.

Wherever there is digital, machine intelligence will likely be infused.

Whatever AI can do, faster, cleaner and good enough, for tasks may also out-compete human intelligence. For example, with Math, some people cannot solve math at a certain level, if they cannot also do any work, of the same standard, in another field, it is unlikely that AI will simply be dismissed because human intelligence should be respected.

This makes it important to have the American Academy of Human Intelligence, with a lot of prioritizing to ensure that human intelligence is solved in the brain, even conceptually.

It is no longer enough to keep assuming that human intelligence cannot be replaced. However, economics and digital could let artificial intelligence keep the important parts, while humans retain others.

Yes, human creativity, inventiveness, and innovation are pristine, they do not just come every day, or available enough to produce value everywhere, every time.

This implies the commonality of operational intelligence, not improvement intelligence which means that if artificial intelligence can operate several valuable processes — competitively, it may cancel out what parts of society, may have to offer.

June, 2026 is Brain Awareness Month. It would have been excellent to have this professional association start up. It can be based on the postulation in Conceptual Biomarkers and Theoretical Biological Factors for Psychiatric and Intelligence Nosology.

There is a recent [June 4, 2026] report on The Transmitter, Exclusive: Brain and spinal cord institute halts research, citing funding problems, stating that, “Research operations have ceased at the Burke Neurological Institute (BNI) in White Plains, New York, The Transmitter has learned. The last day of research operations was 22 May.”

“The BNI is “the only research institute in the U.S. dedicated to finding treatments to repair the brain and spinal cord,” according to its website. It is a nonprofit research institute affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine and supported by the Winifred Masterson Burke Foundation. It receives funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and grants from numerous private funding sources, including the Dana Foundation and Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, according to the BNI website. (It is not affiliated with the Burke Rehabilitation Hospital, which was purchased by Montefiore Health System in 2016.)”

David Stephen does research in conceptual brain science and served as a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona.

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