Stephen Downes

I can accept some version of the evolutionary description of human cognition (illustrated). As a map it probably suffers from some overgeneralization and misattribution, but I wouldn't think it's in any way fundamentally wrong. Human cognition is complex; nobody denies that. Where I disagree with Benjamin Riley is in the characterization of computational thinking, described as 'cognition' in another diagram, and composed of attention, reasoning, decision making, working memory and long-term memory. It's the usual use of the 'mind as computer' metaphor so many cognitive scientists love. But modern AI-based computation doesn't work like that at all. It's complex, so complex that explaining how it works is a major challenge. Is there any reason an AI could not function as described in the illustration? Probably not, though we would ask, why would it? It's the human brain that struggles against evolutionary limitations, not AI.