Does AI work like the brain? And how can we know?

A piece I wrote has just been published in the online magazine Aeon. It tries to tackle the question of whether AI—currently powered by artificial neural networks—actually works like the brain. And perhaps more importantly (because no one article could definitively answer such a big question), it lays out some ideas on how we could even approach the topic.

As a computational neuroscientist, this topic (including the more philosophical question of what counts as “works like,” which is always implicit in computational modeling) is deeply interesting to me and I’d love to write a lot more about it.

But for now, I hope you enjoy reading (or listening to) this piece!

Planes don’t flap their wings; does AI work like the brain?

(also, unexpected content warning: multiple references to faeces and digestion…)