Christian Keysers about how building Artificial Intelligences fucked up the understanding of our own brains
“For a long time the brain was thought to contain separate parts designed for motor control and visual perception. Only in the 1990’s, through the discovery of mirror neurons, did we start to understand that the brain did not work along such divisions, but was instead using motor areas also for perception and perceptual areas also for vision.
I believe that this wrong belief was so deeply engrained because of AI, in which there is no link between what a computer sees human do and the computers routines for moving a robot. Instead, in the human brain the situation is different: the movements we program for our own body look exactly the same as those other humans do. Hence, our motor programs and body are a match for those we observe, and hence afford a strong system for simulating and perceiving the actions of others.
I call this the computer fallacy: thinking of the brain as a computer turned out to harm our understanding of the brain.”
- Christian Kayers, University of Groningen
(Source: edge.org)
