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Comment and Technology

Why I'm deeply sceptical about comparisons between humans and machines

Humans learn very differently to machines, thanks to our biased, malleable memory – and that's a good thing, says Charan Ranganath, director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis

By Charan Ranganath

19 February 2025

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

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Artificial intelligence has humans beat – at least when it comes to games like chess and Go, identifying the 3D structure of proteins, generating investment strategies…the list goes on and on. Some argue that models like ChatGPT are already at the threshold of human intelligence. OpenAI head Sam Altman even threw his unborn child under the bus, claiming “my kid is never gonna grow up being smarter than AI”.

The capabilities of modern AI are certainly impressive, but I am deeply sceptical about comparisons between humans and machines. AI (at present and in the foreseeable future) isn’t all that smart, or…

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