[laratied]

IMO we first need to clean up our language and precisely define the word intelligence so we all know what we are even talking about.

I would imagine we actually understand intelligence but in ordinary language it is a placeholder for a number of different meanings and concepts.

Same problem with "consciousness", same problem with "sentience".

I think when we say we don't understand these words it is really that they can't be understood as they are used in ordinary language because they can't objectively mean all the values people assign to these words.

In the face of AI, why would we not have to further define and expand our language for communication purposes? That actually seems obvious if you think about it for 2 seconds.

[JdeBP]

"sentience" has an additional problem that science fiction authors conflate it with "sapience".

I suspect that some influential science fiction editor made a mistake early on and it stuck. Outwith science fiction, I've less commonly come across the conflation, and people generally use the dictionary meanings, more in accord with the Latin roots, of "sentient" meaning being capable of sensation/feeling and "sapient" meaning being capable of intelligent thought.