How to Create a Superintelligent Agent?

Let’s face it—artificial intelligence remains a misunderstood subject. Across the consumer, business, and industry sectors, many people are still unsure about its role, purpose, and capabilities. Questions persist: Will AI take our jobs? Could society one day be dominated by autonomous machines? Might we even confront debates about “robot rights”? While such concerns make for compelling headlines, the reality is rather less dramatic. True superintelligent humanoids remain firmly in the realm of speculation. Today’s AI systems, however impressive, are still the result of clever programming and smart technology.

Creating Our Superintelligent Agent

At its core, modern AI represents an extraordinary convergence of clever programming, advanced mathematics, and powerful computing techniques. Generative AI (GenAI) tools may appear strikingly human-like, yet they are built upon architectures such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). These algorithms, while not equivalent to human cognition, offer a fascinating starting point for contemplating the idea of superintelligence.

This naturally invites a provocative question: How might we one day design a superintelligent agent? An entity that, at some threshold, may feel less like software and more like an artificial life form possessing intelligence. To explore this possibility, we might borrow from philosophy—specifically Cartesian Dualism, most closely associated with René Descartes. Dualism proposes a separation between mind and body. Whether one agrees with this view or not, it offers an intriguing conceptual template.

The Mind Continues to Baffle Us

Although I tend to view the brain and mind as inseparable, aspects of consciousness, creativity, and subjective experience remain deeply elusive. The brain, as part of the body’s physical constitution, provides functional and operational support. Yet the phenomenon we describe as “mind” continues to challenge neuroscientists and psychologists alike.

Dualism, therefore, provides a useful thought experiment. If we conceptually separate “body” and “mind,” perhaps we can imagine constructing them independently.

We could envisage creating a superintelligent humanoid by developing computational components that replicate aspects of brain function. Both Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, and Jerry Fodor, an American philosopher, explored parallels between minds and information-processing systems. Fodor famously suggested that the mind may consist of specialised modules—“like a collection of special-purpose computers with proprietary databases.”

Using such ideas as inspiration, we might attempt to design an equivalent functional architecture capable of perception, decision-making, and adaptation.

Establishing Rudimentary Capabilities

Any intelligent agent would first require foundational capabilities: Perception (sight, touch, sound), movement, environmental awareness, and basic interaction. Much like the primitive functions governed by the human brain, these systems would enable the agent to operate at a rudimentary level before higher cognition emerges.

Yet even with a highly sophisticated functional system, the question of “mind” remains.

A Base Set of Principles

What if we constructed a vast behavioural dataset capturing decisions, consequences, ethical dilemmas, contextual judgements, and their outcomes? Such a compilation could form the basis of an initial cognitive framework—a kind of synthetic “lessons learned” model. So, eather than programming rigid rules, we could provide the agent with a deep reservoir of behavioural patterns from which it could infer, evaluate, and choose actions autonomously.

With a sufficiently rich set of principles and experiences, the agent might begin generating novel decision pathways. Over time, it could develop adaptive reasoning strategies—perhaps even exhibiting behaviours we associate with independent thought.

Learning, Nurture, and Emergence

In this speculative scenario, our artificial “embryo” would be seeded with core algorithms and behavioural knowledge. From there, learning would occur through iterative interaction—a process not unlike trial and error. Human guidance, calibration, and ethical oversight would serve as the nurturing influence shaping its development.

This echoes the long-standing nature versus nurture debate within human psychology. Intelligence, after all, does not emerge from structure alone, but from experience, feedback, and adaptation.

Until Next Time…

Granting an agent increasing autonomy would inevitably raise concerns. Freedom of thought and self-governance, whether human or artificial, carry inherent risks. Yet if superintelligence were ever to be realised, some degree of independence may be unavoidable.

The challenge would not simply be technical, but ethical, societal, and philosophical. And with that reflection, your “AI psychologist,” Dr G, signs off.