The real promise of symbiotic intelligence is not only to make possible what we could not do before, but to discover possibilities that we could not even imagine before.
For centuries, each major technological transformation forced people to reinvent the way they contribute. When machines multiplied our physical strength, knowledge became increasingly important. When information began to circulate through digital networks, our ability to connect it and turn it into value transformed organizations again.
But now we are faced with a different discontinuity. We are building systems capable of carrying out intellectual activities that, until very recently, we considered inseparable from people. Emad Mostaque, in The Last Economy, poses a disturbing question: if artificial intelligence can take on a growing share of cognitive work, where will humans find their next space of contribution?
In the previous great economic transformations we find new activities to move towards. We move from the field to the factory and from the factory to the offices and to knowledge work. But what happens when machines also begin to perform a significant part of the intellectual activities that underpin our work?
The answer is that we don’t know yet.
But perhaps we’re asking the question wrong. Perhaps the future isn’t about finding another territory to take refuge from machines, but about discovering something we’re just beginning to explore: a new form of intelligence that emerges when human and artificial capabilities are deliberately combined.
An intelligence that does not belong exclusively to people or artificial systems, but emerges from their relationships: Symbiotic intelligence.
For decades we have tried to understand the multiple dimensions of human intelligence. Robert Sternberg, for example, proposed distinguishing between analytical, creative and practical intelligence: three capacities that allow us to understand problems, imagine solutions and function effectively in our environment. His approach expanded our way of understanding intelligence, beyond the abilities traditionally assessed by IQ tests.
Today we are faced with a question of a different nature. It is no longer just a matter of understanding the different capacities of human intelligence, but of discovering what happens when our cognitive capacities can interact with others that are not human. This new reality invites us to explore a different triad: human intelligence, artificial intelligence and symbiotic intelligence.
Human intelligence integrates our cognitive capacities, experiences, emotions, relationships and learning. It allows us to understand situations from our human condition, ask questions, imagine futures, establish purposes, interpret consequences and assume responsibilities. Its richness lies not only in our ability to reason, but also in the way we connect knowledge, values and experiences to give meaning to what we do.
Artificial intelligence provides computational capabilities capable of analysing large amounts of information, identifying patterns, generating applicable knowledge, exploring alternatives and executing certain activities with different degrees of autonomy. Its capabilities may partially coincide with human ones, but its operating mechanisms, its limitations and its relationship with the world are different. Its extraordinary potential does not eliminate the need to contrast results, understand its limits and maintain human judgment.
Symbiotic intelligence represents something conceptually different. It is not another independent intelligence that we should add to the previous two, but a capacity that can emerge from their interactions. It appears as a possibility when human and artificial contributions complement each other, enrich each other and allow the development of knowledge, solutions or capacities that would not arise in the same way acting in isolation.
What is truly interesting is not only what each intelligence contributes, but what can emerge from their relationship. From this perspective, we propose a definition that focuses on the new capacities and possibilities that can arise from this interaction:
Symbiotic intelligence is a capacity emerging from the interaction between human and artificial intelligences that, through their complementarities, allows us to create value, develop new collective capacities and expand the space of possibilities of what we can understand, imagine and achieve together.
This definition introduces an essential difference. Symbiotic intelligence is not limited to producing better responses or performing familiar activities more efficiently. Its most transformative potential is that interaction can generate new capacities that, in turn, open up questions, opportunities, and paths of exploration that were not previously part of our possibilities.
Human and artificial intelligence can help us solve the problems we know. Symbiotic intelligence can also broaden the horizon of the problems we are able to discover and the possibilities we can imagine.
We are already beginning to glimpse these possibilities in very different areas. In medicine, collaboration between researchers and intelligent systems is opening up new paths for understanding and treating complex diseases. In 2025, scientists from Google and Yale University used AI to discover a combination of substances capable of augmenting, in experiments with cells, the signals that allow the immune system to recognize certain tumors, opening up a possible new avenue of cancer research.
Something similar is beginning to happen in scientific research, where new questions and methods of discovery arise; in the creative industries, where artists explore forms of expression that were previously difficult to realize; and in professional work, where the combination of experience and intelligent skills allows problems to be approached in different ways. What is truly transformative is not only to do better what we already did, but to discover new possibilities of knowledge, creation and action.
This same article is, in a way, an example of what I have tried to explain. It was born out of my concerns about the future of intelligence and years of reflection on how organizations evolve. But it took shape through a dialogue with artificial intelligence in which new questions emerged, we contrasted perspectives, I questioned answers, and I discovered connections that I had not initially considered.
AI provided capabilities for analysis, exploration and generation of alternatives; I contributed my experience, my questions, my criteria and the intention of contributing to the debate from a different perspective. The result is a reflection that would hardly have been reached in the same way working separately. What has been really valuable has not been writing this article more quickly, but discovering during the process ideas and possibilities that were not present when we started.
Perhaps that is the best way to explain symbiotic intelligence: this article not only talks about it, but it is also a small experience of what we can achieve when our intelligences complement each other.
Symbiotic intelligence reaches its most transformative potential when the capabilities that emerge from an interaction become the starting point for possibilities that we had not even imagined before.
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