---
title: "Predictive Intelligence"
description: "The thesis of Agüera y Arcas's What Is Intelligence?: intelligence is the ability to \"model, predict, and influence one's future,\" a single computable function, the likelihood of what comes next given what came before."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/predictive-intelligence"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/predictive-intelligence"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Predictive Intelligence

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/predictive-intelligence), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

The thesis of Agüera y Arcas's What Is Intelligence?: intelligence is the ability to "model, predict, and influence one's future," a single computable function, the likelihood of what comes next given what came before. He traces it from Helmholtz through Wiener's 1943 cybernetics paper to Friston, then argues that next-word prediction is "AI complete," so a model that predicts text well enough understands rather than fakes. The claim reaches down as well as up: bacterial chemotaxis computes action from stimulus, and a viable organism is one whose predictions secure its continuation, which ties the concept to Dynamic Stability and the book's definition of Life. Because the function is fixed by inputs and outputs, it is substrate-independent (Functionalism). Bratton adopts it as Artificial Generic Intelligence in After Alignment, and the Cognitive Infrastructures paper on Mutual Prediction extends it to human–AI coevolution; Tripaldi's Substrate Agency objects that what does the predicting matters.

## Appears in

- [Substrates Unbound](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/substrates) (2025-11-21)
- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)
- [Mutual Prediction in Human-AI Coevolution](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra/mutual-prediction-in-human-ai-coevolution) (2025-05-10)
- [What is Intelligence? (Lecture)](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/wii-film) (2025-05-10)
- [After Alignment](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/afteralignment) (2025-05-10)
- [AI Is Evolving — And Changing Our Understanding Of Intelligence](https://antikythera.wiki/work/media/noema-ai-is-evolving-and-changing-our-understanding-of-intelligence) (2025-04-08)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._