Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Erik J. Larson

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a red squirrel sits on a tree in the forest and eats a nut

How Fruit Flies, Bees, and Squirrels Beat Artificial Intelligence

AI researchers assume they are on the path to intelligence, yet intelligence itself remains a mystery and many animals do better than current AI
Real intelligence is embodied. It exists within a living system, interacting dynamically with an environment. AI, on the other hand, is an abstraction. Read More ›
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3D Molecular Visualization: Complex Biomolecule Structure Models. Generative AI.

AI in Biology: The Future AI Didn’t Predict

It doesn’t look like the past. Physical systems that evolve over time but don’t follow a fixed formula have always presented a deep challenge to AI
The problem of outliers or “edge cases” has frustrated AI scientists and engineers (and now structural biologists) for decades, and there’s no good answer yet. Read More ›
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Dementia-related amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles , neurological disorders, protein deposits

AI in Biology: The Disease Connection — When Proteins Go Wrong

Some of the most crucial proteins for human health—the ones we need to understand most urgently—are the very ones that AI has the hardest time modeling
The issue is not simply that AI struggles with intrinsically disordered regions — it is that the very premise of IDR behavior contradicts the way these models operate. Read More ›
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IDP Clinical Trials: Illustrate the stages of clinical trials for drugs targeting intrinsically disordered proteins, from preclinical testing to phase III trials.

AI in Biology: So Is This the End of the Experiment? No.

But a continuing challenge is that many of the most biologically important proteins don’t adopt a single stable structure. Their functions depend on structural fluidity
The core issue AI isn’t just missing data — AlphaFold’s entire approach is built on assumptions that don’t apply to disordered proteins. Read More ›
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AlphaFold Accuracy Visualization on a Tablet Cutting-Edge Biochemical Analysis

AI in Biology: What Difference Did the Rise of the Machines Make?

AI works very well for proteins that lock into a single configuration, as many do. But intrinsically disordered ones don’t play by those rules
The resulting problems aren’t a temporary bug — they’re a basic limitation of training a machine learning model on a dataset where proteins always fold neatly. Read More ›
the-elaborate-process-of-protein-folding-essential-for-prope-583365421-stockpack-adobe_stock
the elaborate process of protein folding, essential for proper function within living organisms

AI in Biology: AI Meets Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Protein folding — the process by which a protein arrives at its functional shape — is one of the most complex unsolved problems in biology
The mystery of protein folding remains unsolved because, as is so often the case with AI narratives, the reality is much more complicated than the hype. Read More ›
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Clever black child thinking on chalkboard background with science formulas

Why Humans Aren’t That Biased, and Machines Aren’t That Smart

Claims about the cognitive biases that supposedly overwhelm our judgment should be taken with a helping of salt
It’s no wonder that techno-futurists trumpet a coming machine intelligence with such ease — they’ve lowered the standards so much to begin with. Read More ›
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Concept of artificial general intelligence achieving human-level understanding

Machine Intelligence and Reasoning: We Are Not on a Path to AGI

AI guru François Chollet’s Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) proves we’re not on a path to AGI
A reality check for LLMs is inevitable, and with OpenAI, “Project Strawberry,” and the new hype cycle — thanks to Chollet and others — it’s already here. Read More ›
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large language model AI machine learning concept brain business

From Data to Thoughts: Why Language Models Hallucinate

The limits of today’s language models and paths to real cognition
We’ll need an architectural approach that can handle propositions—thoughts, judgments, reasoning structures—as first-order objects. Read More ›
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industry 4.0, Factory Industrial Engineer working with automation robot arms machine in intelligent factory, generative ai

Why Human Intelligence Thrives Where Machines Fail

We're worried about AI and trust. We should be worried about something deeper
Our intelligence interacts dynamically with our environment in a way that machine intelligence doesn’t. Read More ›
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The concept of the human brain. The right creative hemisphere versus the left logical hemisphere. Education, science and medical concept, illustration.

The Left Brain Delusion: Are We Steamrolling Human Agency?

The two hemispheres of our brain really do see the world differently

Techno-futurists love to dream up visions of the future. Invariably, these are worlds where everything is under control—where every problem has a solution, and the future unfolds exactly as planned. We do seem to be moving toward some sort of centralized loss of agency. But what’s distinctive about the techno-futurist vision is the belief that this is not only inevitable but wonderful. Self-driving cars eliminate wasted time in traffic; smart cities like Songdo or Masdar City adjust every streetlight and service in real-time to optimize efficiency. AI-driven healthcare, like the tools developed by Google’s DeepMind, promises to  pinpoint diagnoses. Automated finance uses algorithms to manage our money and secure our futures. Everything works, all the time. But doomsday visions flip Read More ›

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Abstract landscape. Colorful art landscape with the tower of Babel in dramatic light. Art illustration. Digital art image.

The New Tower of Babel

The old ways of arguing and understanding each other are on the decline, if not on life support.

We all know Babel (no, not the language learning company). It’s in Genesis. The Biblical story about God making so many languages and dialects and (let’s add) opinions that no one could understand each other or effectively communicate. One legacy of the triumph of digital technology and AI in every corner of our existence is that we’ve recreated this Babel. Let me try to unpack this, and bear with me if it seems I’m saying something derogatory about one belief or another — my aim is to avoid that game and try to explain the mechanism, the social and cultural story, by which our new Babel is ascendant, and the old ways of arguing and understanding each other are on Read More ›

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Confused robot

If AI’s Don’t Know What They’re Doing, Can We Hope to Explain It?

With AI, we have a world of powerful, useful, but entirely opaque systems. We don’t know why they make decisions and neither do they

In yesterday’s post, I talked about the fact that AI’s don’t understand the work they’re doing. That makes the goal — to make them think like people — elusive. This brings us to the second problem, which ended up spawning an entire field, known as “Explainable AI.” Neural networks not only don’t know what they’re doing when they do it, they can’t in general explain to their designers or users why they made such-and-such a decision. They’re a black box; in other words, they are obstinately opaque to any attempts at a conceptual understanding of their decisions or inferences. How does that play out? It means, for example, that, with image recognition tasks like facial recognition, the network can’t explain Read More ›

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Artificial intelligence, White AI robot thinking and looking big screen monitor of big data on blue high technology for the future rise in technological singularity background, Generative AI

Why, Despite All the Hype We Hear, AI Is Not “One of Us”

It takes an imaginative computer scientist to believe that the neural network knows what it’s classifying or identifying. It’s a bunch of relatively simple math
The AI scientist’s dream of general intelligence, often referred to as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), remains as elusive as ever. Read More ›
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1950's COMPUTER

The Present Shock We’re Experiencing

Our modern obsession with the possibility of truly smart machinery keeps a self-important anti-humanism alive and kicking.
It’s downright bizarre to view Big Data as a replacement for human ingenuity and possibility. Read More ›
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Big brother electronic eye concept, technologies for the global surveillance, security of computer systems and networks

This is Digital McCarthyism

Far from being liberated by these technologies, we have been plunged back into the worst abuses of surveillance and privacy violation.

The notion that we’re getting somewhere, making progress, is remarkably durable. It survives wars, financial collapse, riots, scandals, stagnating wages, and climate change (to name a few). Though techno-futurists are also fond of AI apocalypse scenarios, where artificial intelligence somehow “comes alive,” or at any rate uses its superior intelligence to make an autonomous decision to wipe out humanity, much more ink has been spilled this century prognosticating indomitable technical progress, which somehow stands in for human progress generally. But sanguine belief in progress is belied by the actual events of the twenty-first century. Computers have gotten faster and AI more powerful, but digital technology has also been used to spread misinformation, make deep fakes, and conduct relentless cyberwarfare. Financial Read More ›

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3d white room with opened door. Brick wall

Is ChatGPT a Dead End?

There is still no known path to Artificial General Intelligence, including ChatGPT.
I have friends and colleagues who’ve gone almost religious about LLMs and conversational systems like ChatGPT. They tell me it’s true AGI. I disagree. Read More ›
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Fuse burning on black background isolated

What Mission Impossible Tells Us About AI Mythology

If you’re looking for an intelligent take on existential risk and superintelligent AI, the latest Mission Impossible movie is not for you.
If you’re looking for an intelligent take on existential risk and superintelligent AI, the latest Mission Impossible movie is not for you. Read More ›
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Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and modern computer technologies concepts. Business, Technology, Internet and network concept.

Why ChatGPT Is Killing Off Traditional AI

We're living in another AI "winter"
Since it doesn’t know anything in the first place, there’s no way to talk it into sanity once it goes insane. Read More ›