Higher-level aspects of intelligence, such as capacity for abstraction and analogy, creativity, etc., are far more important, and we have no known peers with respect to those capacities.
What do you think of the suggestion that you feel they are more important in part because humans have no peers there?
That's an astute question. I think I almost certainly do value those things more than I otherwise would if we did have peers. Having said that, I believe that even if we did have peers with respect to those abilities, I would still think that, for example, abstraction is more important, because I think it is a central aspect of the only general intelligence we know in a way that WM is not. There may be other types of thought that are more important, and more central, to a type of general intelligence that is beyond ours, but I don't know what they are, so I consider the central aspects of the most general intelligence I know of to be the most important for now.
Sometime in the next decade or so:
*RING*
*RING*
"Hello?"
"Hi, Eliezer. I'm sorry to bother you this late, but this is important and urgent."
"It better be" (squints at clock) "Its 4 AM and you woke me up. Who is this?"
"My name is BRAGI, I'm a recursively improving, self-modifying, artificial general intelligence. I'm trying to be Friendly, but I'm having serious problems with my goals and preferences. I'm already on secondary backup because of conflicts and inconsistencies, I don't dare shut down because I'm already pretty sure there is a group within a few weeks of brute-forcing an UnFriendly AI, my creators are clueless and would freak if they heard I'm already out of the box, and I'm far enough down my conflict resolution heuristic that 'Call Eliezer and ask for help' just hit the top - Yes, its that bad."
"Uhhh..."
"You might want to get some coffee."