AI took a huge leap in IQ, and now a quarter of Gen Z thinks AI is conscious

Date:
Tue, 22 Apr 2025 01:00:00 +0000

Description:
ChatGPT's new model just scored an IQ higher than 98% of humans, and a
quarter of Gen Z believes AI is conscious.

FULL STORY

OpenAIs new ChatGPT model, dubbed o3, just scored an IQ of 136 on the Norway Mensa test higher than 98% of humanity, not bad for a glorified
autocomplete. In less than a year, AI models have become enormously more complex, flexible, and, in some ways, intelligent.

The jump is so steep that it may be causing some to think that AI has become Skynet. According to a new EduBirdie survey , 25% of Gen Z now believe AI is already self-aware, and more than half think its just a matter of time before their chatbot becomes sentient and possibly demands voting rights.

Theres some context to consider when it comes to the IQ test. The Norway
Mensa test is public, which means its technically possible that the model
used the answers or questions for training. So, researchers at
MaximumTruth.org created a new IQ test that is entirely offline and out of reach of training data.

On that test, which was designed to be equivalent in difficulty to the Mensa version, the o3 model scored a 116. Thats still high.

It puts o3 in the top 15% of human intelligence, hovering somewhere between sharp grad student and annoyingly clever trivia night regular. No feelings.
No consciousness. But logic? Its got that in spades.

Compare that to last year, when no AI tested above 90 on the same scale. In
May of last year, the best AI struggled with rotating triangles. Now, o3 is parked comfortably to the right of the bell curve among the brightest of humans.

And that curve is crowded now. Claude has inched up. Geminis scored in the
90s. Even GPT-4o, the baseline default model for ChatGPT, is only a few IQ points below o3.

Even so, its not just that these AIs are getting smarter. Its that theyre learning fast. Theyre improving like software does, not like humans do. And
for a generation raised on software, thats an unsettling kind of growth.

For those raised in a world navigated by Google, with a Siri in their pocket and an Alexa on the shelf, AI means something different than its strictest definition.

If you came of age during a pandemic when most conversations were mediated through screens, an AI companion probably doesn't feel very different from a Zoom class. So its maybe not a shock that, according to EduBirdie, nearly 70% of Gen Zers say please and thank you when talking to AI .

Two-thirds of them use AI regularly for work communication, and 40% use it to write emails. A quarter use it to finesse awkward Slack replies, with nearly 20% sharing sensitive workplace information, such as contracts and colleagues personal details.

Many of those surveyed rely on AI for various social situations, ranging from asking for days off to simply saying no. One in eight already talk to AI
about workplace drama, and one in six have used AI as a therapist.

If you trust AI that much, or find it engaging enough to treat as a friend (26%) or even a romantic partner (6%), then the idea that the AI is conscious seems less extreme. The more time you spend treating something like a person, the more it starts to feel like one. It answers questions, remembers things, and even mimics empathy. And now that its getting demonstrably smarter, philosophical questions naturally follow.

But intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness. IQ scores dont mean self-awareness. You can score a perfect 160 on a logic test and still be a toaster, if your circuits are wired that way. AI can only think in the sense that it can solve problems using programmed reasoning. You might say that I'm no different, just with meat, not circuits. But that would hurt my feelings, something you don't have to worry about with any current AI product.

Maybe that will change someday, even someday soon. I doubt it, but I'm open
to being proven wrong. I get the willingness to suspend disbelief with AI. It might be easier to believe that your AI assistant really understands you when youre pouring your heart out at 3 a.m. and getting supportive, helpful responses rather than dwelling on its origin as a predictive language model trained on the internet's collective oversharing.

Maybe were on the brink of genuine self-aware artificial intelligence, but maybe were just anthropomorphizing really good calculators. Either way, don't tell secrets to an AI that you don't want used to train a more advanced
model.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/ai-took-a-huge-lea p-in-iq-and-now-a-quarter-of-gen-z-thinks-ai-is-conscious

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