A Comparative Cognition Approach to Assessing AI Capabilities

Lucy Cheke (Cambridge)
https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/lucy-cheke-cambridge-2024-06-25
Understanding Higher-Level Intelligence from AI, Psychology, and Neuroscience Perspectives

Understanding and predicting behaviour has been the business of psychologists for over a century. Within human psychology we can rely to some extent on introspection to understand the underlying drivers of behaviour, but this is less straightforward with animals. The problem of peering inside the "black box" of nonhuman animals shares much with the challenge of understanding the capabilities of AI systems - which exhibit extraordinarily - clever-seeming - behaviour, but are prone to inflexibility and shortcuts. This talk will review a comparative cognition approach to AI evaluation and the benefits of robust cognitive testing of AI both to understanding AI itself, but also for exploring biological intelligence.