Not sure if this will be of any use to you but... figured I'd let you decide that!
Walking upright allowed our ancestors to carry more resources greater distances. But not all our ancestors were equally "smart" at figuring out what to carry. It seems pretty straightforward that being better at calculating the best (most valuable) bundles conferred greater fitness. A group that could figure out the best combination of food and weapons to carry would have a greater chance of survival compared to any group that carried too much of one at the expensive of the other. Voila! Here we are... Homo sapiens.
Right now there's some concern regarding the rise of super intelligent robots. In order to beat us, robots have to be better than we are at determining which bundles to carry. If a robot leaves home but forgets to take a spare battery with it... then it's probably not going to "win".
The process by which humans have come to be better at valuation seems pretty clear to me. Individuals that weren't that great at valuations were removed from the gene pool. But with robots... it's not that clear to me. How do robots become better than we are at valuation? What does that process entail? If I want to upgrade my computer then I have to buy the necessary components. How does a moderately smart robot buy the necessary components it needs to upgrade itself? Are we guessing that it has a job? Are we guessing that it robs a bank? Are we guessing that we'll hire robots to protect banks from thieving robots?
And, if robots do become better than we are at valuation... then should we really be concerned that they will waste us? Right now we waste each other. If robots waste us too then they are no better at valuation than we are. They'll fit right in with us. Some will end up in jail and the worst ones will end up in congress.
If robots don't waste us, then they are better at valuation than we are.
So it's hard for me to imagine a realistic scenario where robots 1. are better at valuation than we are and 2. waste us.
If you're interested in "my" theory of human intelligence... What Do Coywolves, Mr. Nobody, Plants And Fungi All Have In Common?
As part of a philosophy course I'm currently taking called Intelligence in Machines, Humans, and Other Animals, I have to write a <3000w essay on a topic related to intelligence. The description is here, but I've copied the important details below. I figured I might as well solicit suggestions for things to research. Realistically, I am likely to optimize the essay more for passing the course than for rigour though, so if you're expecting a very thorough review of something then you may be disappointed. But I suspect that it will still be at least an interesting jumping-off point.
Edited to add: Note that these are pretty squirrellable. E.g. Last time I took "Learning" and used it to talk about (recursive) self-improvement in machines and humans (planning to post this at some point). So feel free to propose something even if you only have a vague notion of how it would fit into one of the categories
One constraint: I need to be able to ask some sort of question and then produce evidence towards either side of it, i.e. it can't just be a review of the topic. But this too can be pretty vague; in my last essay I did "are humans or machines better suited for self-improvement?", concluding "humans for now, ultimately machines".