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Jamil El Imad Says AI Is "Artificial Intellect," Not Human Intelligence

Intelligence involves imagination and emotions, attributes that machines cannot replicate. Successful companies, he says, pay attention to people and to what they can do that machines cannot.

August 11, 2026

Many argue that generative AI will radically transform businesses, eliminate many roles, and ultimately lead to what technology leaders such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX owner Elon Musk describe as artificial general intelligence. The AGI debate has intensified as large language models demonstrate increasingly broad capabilities, with some researchers estimating arrival within years and others questioning whether current architectures can ever achieve it.

Others view the technology more as a productivity tool that can help maximize human potential and create new opportunities. Jamil El Imad, a longtime technology expert and honorary senior research fellow at Imperial College London's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, said AI is powerful but still lacks the kind of intelligence humans possess.

In an interview at the AI4 conference in Las Vegas last week, El Imad discussed what he sees as the difference between intelligence and intellect, and the kinds of jobs he believes will be valued in the age of AI. His distinction echoes a long-standing debate in cognitive science and philosophy of mind about whether computation alone can replicate consciousness, creativity, and emotional understanding.

Do you think artificial general intelligence is possible?

Jamil El Imad: It's fantastic what AI can do today with natural language.

Intelligence is a big word. Humans have a habit of always overstating what we create; we understate nature.

What we have now is not intelligence. We have intellect. It's different. Intellect is when somebody reads a lot of books and can sit in a quiz and answer from that body of knowledge. Super smart. Intelligence is when someone comes up with a crazy idea that isn't in any book.

In history, the people who really made a difference, from Newton to Einstein, all these great thinkers and scientists, did not come up with what is in the book.

Intelligence, to me, is about imagination. We are blessed as humans with imagination. No other species has that. We can dream of something and then make it a reality. We can think outside the box.

This is intelligence, which is emotions. All these attributes that make someone intelligent are not found in machines.

The machines are faster; they can compute faster than we can. They can analyze faster than we can. They can store a lot more data, and they don't lose their memory. But if I were to rename AI, I would call it artificial intellect and give the intelligence to humans.

Intelligence is biological. Zeros and ones, that is not intelligence. I worked on a machine called assembly code for 35 years, and we were doing statistical approximation, guessing what's going to happen next. There's no intelligence, there's no awareness. This is all statistics.

There is a new wave, where we may be able to use binary principles to create cognitive AI. Cognitive AI is mimicking the brain a little bit.

There are 86 billion neurons in our heads. We cannot simulate those neurons. We cannot now build, not IBM nor Nvidia; they cannot build 86 billion neurons and simulate them.

That's the only organ in our body that we cannot simulate. We can simulate a kidney, lungs and heart, but we cannot simulate that.

What does "guided autonomous AI" mean for enterprises and businesses?

El Imad: There's a lot of talk about autonomous. Autonomous is a big word. A machine having full control of the situation or whatever assignment you've given it is still very dangerous.

Even in the workplace, humans are quite intelligent compared with these machines. They still have accountability. In a corporation, when you have everybody, including the CEO and even the board, they have a schedule of authority.

That's what accountability is. If we don't have accountability on these models, we are creating digital tyranny.

I worry that we could end up being run by autonomous systems with no human oversight. These machines don't have empathy or passion.

His concerns align with growing regulatory attention to AI accountability, including the EU AI Act's risk-tiering framework and U.S. executive orders requiring federal agencies to maintain human oversight of automated systems.

Why do you think this is the luckiest generation because of AI-related job opportunities?

El Imad: Given a choice, would you think it's so meaningful to work in accounts and sit there all day plugging in spreadsheets? Is that what we're designed for? Is that what humans can offer? It's horrible. We have so many horrible jobs now, and we accept it because this is how it is. It's boring, repetitive.

AI will take a lot of these jobs away from us. That leaves us with creativity. With each era, new jobs are created, and old jobs disappear.

The same thing with AI: we will see new jobs coming. These jobs will involve humans. That's one thing AI cannot beat us in: our humanity.

I've created a job in one of my articles called The Humanizer. Keeping the human itself is a job in itself. We need to keep our humanity. We need to revisit how we interact with each other in our workplace and with our customers.

His optimism about new job creation reflects a pattern observed across prior technology shifts, though economists note that transitions can be disruptive for workers whose existing skills are displaced before new roles fully emerge.

How does that apply in business settings, especially when some would argue that most businesses value profit more than humanity?

El Imad: Businesses that are for-profit value profit. But if you want sustainable profits rather than short-term gains, you need to look after your employees. What better way to get these employees to perform than by creating a workplace culture that is compassionate, inclusive and respectful?

So, humans, we are weird. Profit is not always what we care about. Good companies grow when they understand that.

Companies that have programs to retrain for the age of AI and ensure that most employees have value to offer will be successful.

Editor's note: This story was edited for clarity and conciseness.