Intelligence is what a person can work out, and a phone extends that enormously

The argument

Proponents argue that the question is usually answered wrongly because intelligence is measured in the wrong place. If intelligence means what a person can recall unaided, then a device that holds the facts for them looks like a loss. But what matters about intelligence, proponents argue, is the capacity to solve problems, reach sound conclusions and act well on them, and this capacity has always been distributed across a person and their tools. Writing, maps, tables, slide rules and reference books each moved some of the work outside the head, and in each case the result was that people could handle problems they previously could not. On this account a phone is the most capable instrument of that kind yet made, and its effect is to raise the ceiling of what an ordinary person can establish. Someone who can check a claim against several sources while the conversation is still happening, translate a language they do not speak, calculate something they could not do in their head, identify a plant or a symptom or a part, find the instructions for a repair, or ask people who have solved the same problem is reasoning with far more material than the same person without the device. This is not a substitute for thinking but the raw input to it. Proponents add that the gains are largest for the people who previously had least. Access to reference material, expert explanation, instruction and advice used to depend on proximity to libraries, schools and professionals, which distributed thinking capacity along lines of wealth and geography. A phone supplies much of that to anyone holding one. Measuring the change by whether people can still recite what they used to memorise mistakes the storage medium for the intelligence, and the correct test is what someone can figure out, which has plainly risen.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that the distinction between a tool and a capacity is being blurred to make the case. A person with a phone can produce answers, but the capacity belongs to the system rather than to them, and removing the device reveals what they can actually do. They also argue that the comparison with writing and maps fails because those tools required skill to use and effort to consult, whereas a phone supplies conclusions without any intervening work, so nothing is practised. Critics add that the argument describes the device's potential rather than its use: the same instrument that could check a claim is mostly used for entertainment and social feedback, and an available capability that goes unused does not make anyone smarter.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Redefining intelligence as what a person can do with tools makes the conclusion true by stipulation rather than establishing it. [Rejecting P2] Earlier tools required skill and effort to consult, so they exercised the user's judgement in a way a device supplying finished answers does not. [Rejecting P3] Capability that is available but mostly unused does not raise anyone's thinking, and the same device is predominantly used for entertainment. [Rejecting C] What a person can establish with assistance says little about what they can establish, which is what the question asks.