I've been under the impression that intelligence is directly linked to how well the brain is able to make and revisit connections between neurons/ideas it's made.
It's certainly possible that the people who handle the most raw data, reading and information will have be able to become a lot more intelligent but I think there are other things too (such as receiving information in multiple formats, I can learn something well if someone else already knows it and can quickly explain it and then answer any questions that arise).
The only difference between artificial intelligence in 1970 and 2022 is the amount of data chips can process.
In past decades, there were no processors with the computational capacity to calculate every possible move in chess. Self driving AI cars did not become possible until processors had improved to a point where they could effectively process large streams of data fed to them by sensors and navigational equipment.
Based on surface observations of advances made in artificial intelligence. A direct correlation can be drawn between higher data processing capacity and intelligence.
People being exposed to larger streams of data and information in the form of radio, television and the internet. Coupled with greater systemic threats from the environment in the form of financial scams. Along with more avenues and options for communication and complex social interactions. Could all converge to drive human intelligence in an uptrend over the long term.
It is possible that we're already seeing evidence of this happening. While it may have taken many many years for people to accept heliocentrism and the concept of the world being a sphere, rather than flat. Today people might be far more willing to test, challenge and overturn their base assumptions. It could be one indication of human intelligence growing and developing at a faster rate, in contrast to previous eras of history.
True, today's people want everything to make sense so that it can be accepted within themselves, this results in the person explaining it must be able to answer all forms of doubt that arise as a question from the recipient of the information by diagnosing what, who, where, when, which, why, and how. human interaction (with himself, the environment, and problems) and information will increase intelligence.
Human intelligence is divided into intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, and spiritual intelligence which have their own classification so that humans become the most perfect creatures on earth because they can improve it better from time to time.
Discussing human evolution and progress so far to being smarter than in the past, we have to look at the theories that have been formulated from one of the evolutionary, the study by Charles Darwin will be resourceful. With Darwin's theory we could see the evolutionary progress of humans until it got to the missing link from where humans became bipedal.
I completely agree with Darwin's theory of human evolution, only in the context of human evolution (thinking, remembering, behaving, and feeling), and in the evolution of body shape. But not for "man came from ape" this is totally against my logic because human form can be explained by different natural conditions and interbreeding between two different regions to create new forms of combining different genes in human population.
I don't think any human would instinctively accept that they came from an ape species.