My own suggestion would be to use a variety of different phrasings here, including both “capabilities” and “intelligence”, and also “cognitive ability”, “general problem-solving ability”, “ability to reason about the world”, “planning and inference abilities”, etc. Using different phrases encourages people to think about the substance behind the terminology—e.g., they’re more likely to notice their confusion if the stuff you’re saying makes sense to them under one of the phrasings you’re using, but doesn’t make sense to them under another of the phrasings.
Phrases like “cognitive ability” are pretty important, I think, because they make it clearer why these different “capabilities” often go hand-in-hand. It also clarifies that the central problems are related to minds / intelligence / cognition / etc., not (for example) the strength of robotic arm, even though that too is a “capability”.
My own suggestion would be to use a variety of different phrasings here, including both “capabilities” and “intelligence”, and also “cognitive ability”, “general problem-solving ability”, “ability to reason about the world”, “planning and inference abilities”, etc. Using different phrases encourages people to think about the substance behind the terminology—e.g., they’re more likely to notice their confusion if the stuff you’re saying makes sense to them under one of the phrasings you’re using, but doesn’t make sense to them under another of the phrasings.
Phrases like “cognitive ability” are pretty important, I think, because they make it clearer why these different “capabilities” often go hand-in-hand. It also clarifies that the central problems are related to minds / intelligence / cognition / etc., not (for example) the strength of robotic arm, even though that too is a “capability”.