Philosophies & Movements
g factor
Short for general intelligence factor: the statistical finding that people who score well on one kind of mental test tend to score well on others, summarized as a single number. In AI debates it underpins the idea that intelligence is one measurable quantity a machine could have more or less of. Critics point out that the concept was developed and promoted by early eugenicists and argue that intelligence is not a single scale.
Origin
Introduced by the English psychologist Charles Spearman in his 1904 paper "'General Intelligence,' Objectively Determined and Measured" in the American Journal of Psychology. Spearman was also a supporter of eugenics, a link critics of AGI discourse, including those interviewed in the 2026 documentary Ghost in the Machine, highlight.