The text provides thoughtful insights into the remarkable capacities of human perception and cognition. It invites humans to appreciate the complexity, adaptability, and innate gifts evolution has instilled in their species after millions of years of gradual neural upgrading. By comparing the still primitive artificial perceiving machines scientists can build today to the fluid intelligence of even a young child, humans gain perspective on the monumental challenges ahead in developing true artificial general intelligence (Rettberg, 2023).
Several intertwined attributes make human perception so quick, versatile, and robust compared to machines. One is the unparalleled pattern recognition abilities. Through the hierarchical nature of neural processing, raw sensory signals get analyzed for fundamental features that activate increasingly complex neurons selective for real-world categories, objects, sounds, written characters, faces, and more (Rose et al.,2021). This exquisite hierarchy built up from birth through lifelong learning allows humans to swiftly classify stimuli despite one-off variations. For instance, when one recognizes a friend’s voice on a crackling phone line or their mother’s handwriting on a scribbled grocery list despite the distortions.
Another perception gift for humans is the exceptional skills at using context, drawn unconsciously from accumulated life knowledge, to inform and direct their interpretations of ambiguous or incomplete sensory details. From partial glimpses of shapes through the foliage, humans can readily infer a whole tree because their visual cortex combines the fragmented bottom-up signals with top-down expectations and best guesses. They imagine nonexistent details to complete the percept. So much real-world data is noisy, incomplete, or contradictory (Rettberg, 2023). But human brains filter admirably by filling gaps, overlooking contradictions, and hallucinating absent patterns where needed to construct coherent meaning.
Humans’ social interaction abilities also have no equal in artificial systems. Humans have innate talents for gaze following, reading subtle emotions, inferring intentions via mental state attributions, sensing deceit or danger, and empathizing (Janhonen, 2023). Humans’ huge cerebral cortex evolved over millions of years specifically to accommodate the complex demands of group living, cooperation, competition, and communication. They are profoundly wired to find deep social meaning in the words, gestures, expressions, and actions of other beings with minds like theirs. Human social intelligence develops from infancy into supreme aptitudes for human relations.
Additionally, human perception excels when dealing with unfamiliar situations, unlike anything they have encountered before. Perpetual neuroplasticity allows human brains to continuously adapt and stretch while insatiable curiosity drives them to explore novelty (Rettberg, 2023). Their cognitive capacities extrapolate creatively from sparse data to grasp new concepts. Just a few examples prompt humans to derive insightful working theories of novel foods, gadgets, or abstract art via the dynamic interplay of their sensing and reasoning. Machines falter instead when given raw perceptual data lacking definitive categorized patterns.
The complexity of human cognition reveals itself when injured or defective. Losing modules like the fusiform face area of the temporal lobe robs humans of face recognition, even for the most intimate loved ones. This fragility highlights the interdependencies linking distinct brain regions together into miraculous unified systems generating humans’ rich perceptual experience (Rettberg, 2023). Selective gifts in alternative wiring like autism also prove each human mind has unique strengths and weaknesses within narrow parameters.
Compared to humans’ robust and flexible ways of constructing reality, machines remain rigid and primitive. Their pattern recognition using neural nets lacks true semantic understanding (Rose et al.,2021). Machines cannot yet accumulate insights over time by incorporating each new experience into an ever-growing reservoir of memories, knowledge, and intuitions they can marshal unconsciously to inform their interpretations of events. They lack common sense and agency. Their perceptual worlds are devoid of social meaning.
Humans are challenged to appreciate the almost unfathomable complexity of the human brain and their modes of sense-making. Hundreds of dedicated regions, thousands of specialized cognitive mechanisms, and over 80 billion neurons weave together to generate human perceptions, inferences, predictions, and behaviors (Rettberg, 2023). No computer code or wiring diagrams can yet capture this emergent wonder that evolved over millions of years. Humans should stand in awe of the everyday miracle in each unique human mind.
For students, several key insights follow about the origins and functions of human perceptual talents within larger issues of epistemology and being. Firstly, acknowledging how much pre-conscious processing occurs constantly, constructing order from chaotic signals. Assumptions, guesses, interpretations, and subjectivity are inextricable from human cognition. Their reality is as much fabricated as observed (Rettberg, 2023). This grants them responsibility in choosing perspectives and recognizing no two people share identical worldviews.
Relatedly, humans’ automatic judgments, attitudes, and actions ride atop and reflect these built-in perceptual filters they view existence. Humans must challenge inherent biases and transcend their cognitive constraints through vigilant critical thinking. Humans reasoning abilities can overcome restrictive aspects of their evolutionary make-up (Rettberg, 2023). Additionally, appreciating the complexity of contextual human perception highlights why developing artificial general intelligence remains such an epic obstacle. The idiosyncrasies and fluid intensities of personal human experience cannot be reduced to machinelike algorithms. Human minds are more wondrous and precious than any technology they can engineer.
Ultimately, the human’s innate gifts equip them for greater purposes. Their exceptional information processing and social cognition abilities were evolutionary means towards increasing cooperation, communication, and thriving among tribes. Humans can consciously channel these talents to equally profound ends today. Their perception and wisdom should enhance human relations and the global community. With care, human cognition can uplift humanity.
References
Janhonen, J. (2023). Socialisation approach to AI value acquisition: Enabling flexible ethical navigation with built-in receptiveness to social influence. AI and Ethics, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-023-00372-8
Rettberg, J. W. (2023). Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World. John Wiley & Sons. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jaLWEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA6&dq=Rettberg,+J.+W.+(2023).+Machine+Vision:+How+Algorithms+are+Changing+the+Way+We+See+the+World.+John+Wiley+%26+Sons&ots=WbLRfwntjD&sig=ugPQLZSffh75JaaFNu7SSsOYI8A
Rose, O., Johnson, J., Wang, B., & Ponce, C. R. (2021). Visual prototypes in the ventral stream are attuned to complexity and gaze behavior. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1-16. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27027-8.pdf
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