The Difference Between Skill and Intelligence

Chollet distinguishes between skill (high performance on a specific task acquired through practice) and intelligence (the capacity to efficiently acquire new skills). The post argues that current AI discourse conflates these two properties — when GPT-4 writes good code or essays, it is demonstrating accumulated skill from training data, not intelligence per se. Intelligence would mean quickly mastering a completely novel domain with minimal examples. The post uses chess as an analogy: a chess grandmaster has extraordinary chess skill, but that skill doesn't transfer to novel games. Intelligence is what allows you to learn a new game quickly, not excel at one you've played 10,000 times.