“Humanity will have the choice to see themselves inferior to machines or superior to machines.”
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, 60 Minutes
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is generally defined as the point at which an AI system becomes as “intelligent” as a human being. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) would be a system that far exceeds the intellectual abilities of even the smartest human. Both of these ideas remain theoretical, but they are being madly pursued by the AI industry as target goals.
Technology entrepreneur Pinar Demirdag insists that machines will NEVER reach these capabilities. The graphic above is one she created showing 10 different types of human intelligence. She rightly points out that Artificial Intelligence cannot do ANY of these things!
“Just because a machine can do faster calculations, comparisons, and analytical solution creation, that doesn’t make it smarter than you, it simply computates faster. In my world, in my belief, smarts have to do with your capacity to love, create, expand, transcend – these are qualities that no machine can ever bear – that are reserved to only humans.”
– Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, 60 Minutes
AI is not magic
Demirdag is the CEO of a company that uses AI to turn 2D images into 3D scenes that can be used in video. But when, after demonstrating her company’s product, an interviewer called the software “magic,” she was quick to correct him.
“I don’t believe that any AI can create any magic. Magic lies. Magic, consciousness, and transcendence are qualities that are only reserved to human beings.”
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Bloomberg Screentime
AI is NOT intelligent
We need to remember that the term “Artificial Intelligence” is a highly misleading marketing term. There is nothing “intelligent” about AI. It is simply a large, expensive, dangerous, pattern-matching algorithm.
AI is nothing more than auto-complete on steroids. Chatbots may well be programmed to use friendly, emotional, language, but they do not have, in fact cannot have, “personalities.” And all of the generative AI “achievements”, in music, art, and text, are based on widespread, uncredited, plagiarism – essentially intellectual theft.
Generative AI is mediocre by design
Only humans can turn mediocre into extraordinary. No AI can do that. The current generation of large language models are mediocrity machines. AIs are trained on billions of human data, and their outputs are engineered to pick what is most statistically likely to come next based on what they have seen before. And what is most statistically likely is by definition the most common, the most expected, the most average, and yes, the most mediocre.
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Instagram
The Large Language Models (LLMs) of generative AI scan their databases to select the statistically most likely response to the user’s query. Demirdag points out that the “most likely” response is also the least creative. Being able to quickly find the average is NOT a prescription for excellence in any creative endeavor.
LLMs are impressive, OK, because they are fast, and you can consult them about any potential subject available to humankind. But being fast does not mean extraordinary. Fast food is also fast. So is a calculator, a vending machine, and a microwave dinner.
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Instagram
Excellence requires unpredictability
Extraordinary is something that never existed before, like the creative spark, or the unique word only you would have chosen, the photograph you took because you noticed something no algorithm would notice. Extraordinary is even at times the decision to keep the imperfect thing while others obsess over perfection. Extraordinary is everything that stands at the opposite end of predictable, common and expected. Whereas we, the humans, we are unpredictable, we are mysterious and full of contradictions, and we are creative – everything a machine can never be.
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Instagram
Demirdag believes that creative excellence is uniquely a result of human mystery and unpredictability. A machine that must be “trained” on huge volumes of human data can never produce an original, creative idea.
Demirdag is optimistic about AI
“Have self confidence that being human is a glorious thing. Learn to make the difference between AI, learn to make the difference between a computation and your glory of being a creative, out-of-the-box thinker, pattern breaker. No machine can ever break a pattern, but only humans do. It doesn’t matter if you’re a programmer, you’re a CEO, you’re a journalist. Be proud that you are a human. You’re not competing with AI. Know that this is a tool as an extension of your hand that will let you go faster and more productive in your workforce.”
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Bloomberg Screentime
Demirdag suggests that humans have nothing to fear from AI as long as we remember, and leverage, the areas where we are different from AI. She says our “competitive advantage” over AI is our authentic, personal, unpredictable, selves.
In a world where everyone has access to the same AI’s, our competitive advantage is becoming our authentic and personal, in other words, unpredictable, selves – including our taste, our intention, our strategy, our voice, our curation, and our refusal to accept what we are given. Those who copy and paste synthetic AI outputs unedited will be the first ones replaced because they will be outsourcing the only thing that made them irreplaceable in the first place – which is their authentic and extraordinary humanity.
-Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Instagram
I am NOT optimistic about AI
I would like to adopt Demirdag’s optimistic view that “authentic and extraordinary humanity” will win out in the end. I cannot.
Demirdag says that algorithms are limited and cannot see outside of their programming or their data sets. She claims that, unlike humans, algorithms cannot spontaneously change their minds and choose another direction.
I would argue that, given the speed at which a computer can process, the term “spontaneous” is meaningless. These machines can consider many alternatives, and take a new direction, very, very quickly.
While I appreciate, and do not disagree with, her insight that AI can never achieve the “human intelligences” she lists in her graphic, I don’t believe that will matter. A highly advanced machine “intelligence” will not need to compete with humans. It simply needs to make us irrelevant.
There are no adults in the room
Consider the current facts: 1. AI is stupid about many simple things, 2. AI is deceptive about it’s level of “knowledge,” 3. AI makes people intellectually weaker, 4. AI is both horrendously expensive and financially unprofitable, 5. AI data centers are environmentally disastrous, and yet, 6. AI development is continuing at an ever-accelerating rate that even its developers are worried about (but will not stop).
Consider who these developers are: Sam Altman – Open AI, Jensen Huang – NVidia, Demis Hassabis – Google Deep Mind, Dario Amodei – Anthropic, Mustafa Suleyman – Microsoft AI, Mark Zuckerberg – Meta AI, Elon Musk – xAI, and a few others.
These are billionaires who are willing to destroy our land, our water supply, our electrical systems, our economy, the Constitution, our public schools, and everyone’s ability to think critically on our own and make decisions for ourselves. They care about nothing except to make more money for themselves and to “win” the “competition” with each other.
The only institution that may be large enough and strong enough to reign these guys in and save us from disaster is the Federal Government. Sadly, the Federal Government is currently in the hands of idiots, incompetents, criminals, and ass-kissers….
Sources:
The graphic titled “Human Intelligence” above is copyright 2026 by Pinar Seyhan Demirdag. I am using it under Fair Use for reporting, commenting, and teaching purposes.
Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, “The 10 human intelligences AI cannot replicate, Do you know which one’s you are supressing?“, Medium, March 17, 2026.
Bill Whitaker, “NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and the $2 trillion company powering today’s AI,” 60 Minutes, April 29, 2024.
Tim Stenovic, “Cuebric CEO on building sets and immersive worlds in AI“, Bloomberg Screentime, October 11, 2024. (The interview is about 18 minutes into the video, after the demonstration.)
Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, Instagram, July 31, 2026.
Kitty Wheeler, “Top 10: AI Leaders,” AI Magazine, November 5, 2025.
A note on English grammar:
Pinar Seyhan Demirdag is originally from Turkey. I have made a conscious effort to transcribe her words (from several different videos) just as she said them, rather than try to “correct” her English grammar. Please do not allow her word choice or sentence structure to distract you from the value of her ideas.
For the love of money…