Our minds aren't equipped to handle AI, argues essay on human cognition

An essay published by The Verge’s AI section, titled “Our minds aren’t equipped to handle AI,” examines how computational metaphors have shaped a century of thinking about the human mind, and argues that this framing falls short.

The piece opens with a line from Norbert Wiener, the mathematician credited as a founder of cybernetics: “The thought of every age is reflected in its technique.” The essay applies that observation to the present, noting that computers have supplied the dominant metaphor for human thought for decades, a habit shared by figures in the AI industry today.

The essay cites Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, describing the brain as “a biological approximation to a Turing machine.” It also quotes Elon Musk’s assertion that “people should just think of the brain as a biological computer,” a comparison the essay’s author meets with open skepticism, remarking that Musk’s brain “often worries me.”

Against these computational analogies, the essay states plainly that humans are “more complex” than such comparisons allow, though the provided material does not elaborate on what that added complexity consists of or where the argument goes from there.

The summary available ends at that point, without further detail on the essay’s subsequent reasoning or conclusions.