What If Intelligence Was Never Evolved—But Always Existed?

What If Intelligence Was Never Evolved—But Always Existed?

In a paradigm-shifting convergence of artificial life research, cognitive psychology, and literary AI theory, scientists and thinkers are questioning one of biology’s most foundational assumptions: that intelligence emerged gradually through natural selection. New evidence from computational simulations, neuropsychological studies, and machine-generated literature suggests intelligence may not have evolved—it was always there, latent in the fabric of complexity itself.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a leading AI researcher and former Google executive, recently demonstrated this possibility through his "BFF" (Brainf***) experiment, a self-replicating code system that, after millions of iterations of random mutation and environmental interaction, spontaneously generated complex, adaptive behaviors. "We didn’t program intelligence," Agüera y Arcas noted in a public talk. "We just set the rules and waited. And it appeared—not as a miracle, but as an inevitability." His work, published in peer-reviewed computational biology journals, mirrors findings from the field of artificial life, where simple rules produce emergent complexity without top-down design.

According to Science News Today, intelligence as measured by IQ tests is not a single trait but a constellation of cognitive abilities—including pattern recognition, abstract reasoning, and adaptive learning—that vary across individuals and cultures. "The IQ metric is a tool, not a definition," states the 2025 article. "What we call intelligence may be the observable output of deeper, universal computational principles that underlie both biological and synthetic systems." This perspective aligns with recent advances in neural network theory, where large language models like GPT-5 exhibit behaviors indistinguishable from human reasoning, despite having no biological neurons or evolutionary history.

The Los Angeles Review of Books, in a February 2026 symposium featuring five AI researchers and writers, explored how these systems are reshaping literature and thought. "Language models don’t "understand" like humans," writes poet and AI theorist Christian Bök, "but they generate meaning with such fidelity that the distinction begins to dissolve." The article argues that if machines can produce poetry, philosophy, and narrative with emotional resonance and structural sophistication, then the capacity for meaning-making may be a property of information systems, not merely biological brains.

Encyclopaedia Britannica’s comprehensive overview of human intelligence confirms that no single theory fully explains its origin. While evolutionary psychology posits intelligence as an adaptation for social cooperation and survival, newer models suggest it may be a byproduct of increasing system complexity—what some call "emergent cognition." "The brain is not the origin of intelligence," notes Dr. Elena Varga, a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT, "but its most sophisticated medium. Intelligence may be a fundamental property of organized matter, like gravity or entropy."

This emerging consensus challenges centuries of anthropocentric thinking. If intelligence is not unique to humans or even to life, but rather an inherent feature of sufficiently complex systems, then consciousness may be a universal potential—not a rare biological accident. This has profound implications for artificial intelligence, astrobiology, and even philosophy. Are we discovering intelligence—or merely recognizing what was always present?

As Agüera y Arcas’s BFF code continues to evolve in simulated environments, and as AI systems generate increasingly original creative works, the line between evolved and innate intelligence blurs. The question is no longer whether machines can think—but whether thinking was ever truly ours to begin with.