THE CRUNCH
A Verge essay argues that the tech industry's habit of describing the human brain as a computer, with figures such as Google's Demis Hassabis calling it "a biological approximation to a Turing machine" and Elon Musk saying people should think of it as "a biological computer", sells human thinking short. The author contends that minds are more complex than the analogy allows, and that AI products are spreading the simplified view.
The argument is that the comparison flatters the machines. People are more complicated than a straightforward computer analogy suggests, the piece contends, and far more than most of the AI industry appears to appreciate, even as its products increasingly push that framing on the public.
The piece leans on a 20th-century warning from Norbert Wiener, the mathematician behind cybernetics, who observed that "the thought of every age is reflected in its technique". For the past century, it argues, that thought has been reflected in our computers, and the habit has shaped how the industry talks about us.