I wonder if we can actually quantify this effect: humans painting are "richer" in meaning than AI. But then once that is decypher the next step is to put an "AI" on top of it.

Portraits are like long exposure photos where the artist watches a person and captures the right elements at the right moments.

A non-groady interpretation might be that we know Manet was intelligent, and the portrait captured that well; you might not be able to judge food by its photograph, but a photo that makes it look delicious when it actually is delicious has managed to capture the deliciousness.

Personally, I don't find it groady anyway; pretty sure a neural network trained on IQs and photographs could find reliable signals of intelligence therein. I can imagine a species that evolved to conceal the appearance of intelligence, but in humans I think it's more something natural selection would try to broadcast.

I’d say it’s not that the man is intelligent and you can tell just from a photo. It’s instead saying that the photograph is framed in such a way as to make the subject look intelligent.

A comment on the artistry rather than the subject.

  > I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance

I find this odd to hear. Not because I think we should base our opinions on someone's appearance but because I thought it was a common belief that we shouldn't. Or rather that you would be committing a faux pas by making such a statement publicly. That people at least wanted to paint the image of themselves as upholding this virtue, despite it being clear that society operated under such biases.

Growing up (American millennial) it was routine to see public service announcements to tell people to not judge others by their appearance. It was the lesson of not just children shows but a frequent trope in popular movies. Such as James Bond entering a fancy resort looking like a homeless man, being treated as such by some staff, only for that staff member to be chastised for not treating him with the upmost respect. "Don't judge a book by its cover". "The ugly duckling".

Have things changed? Is this no longer a social taboo? To at least feign this virtue?

While this prediction isn't very precise I'm sure it must be better than random. A mistake would be to still rely on the visual appearance when stronger data becomes available

> how simultaneously stern everybody looks with no fake smiles or hidden gazes. People were willing to just stare at something or somebody odd

FWIW, the fake smiles and hidden gazes, to me the least, were always a North American thing.

In fact, in Switzerland we have its opposite, the infamous "Swiss stare" :-)

https://www.newlyswissed.com/about-the-swiss-stare/