FriSem

Gordon Bower Lecture

Professor  Keith Holyoak, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles 

Title: Intelligence, Creativity, and Consciousness in Humans and (Perhaps) Machines

Abstract: Humans view their own species as representing the pinnacle of biological intelligence, capable of creative thinking and endowed with conscious experience-private awareness of the external world and the self.  Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), and particularly large language models (LLMs) raise the question of whether machines can equal or surpass human intelligence, and whether they might also achieve “authentic” creativity and consciousness.  I will compare human and machine performance on tests of analogical reasoning, a process that in humans requires intelligence, enables creativity, and is accompanied by conscious experience.  My current assessment is that AI now rivals humans in (verbal) analogical reasoning, yet is limited in creative autonomy, and altogether lacking in conscious experience.  AI systems of the types developed over the past 80 years may not capture biological properties of the nervous system essential for the full scope of human cognition and emotion.