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AI Research Needs Insights from Developmental Psychology

12/5/2025

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Summary

Story summary

Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at Santa Fe Institute, spoke at NeurIPS about evaluating cognitive capabilities in AI, babies, and animals.
She argued that AI researchers should adopt developmental and comparative psychology methods, including careful control experiments and examining failure modes to learn cognition.
Mitchell cited Clever Hans to show how subtle cues can mislead conclusions about an animal's arithmetic ability, underscoring skepticism in AI research.

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Story summary

Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at Santa Fe Institute, spoke at NeurIPS about evaluating cognitive capabilities in AI, babies, and animals.
She argued that AI researchers should adopt developmental and comparative psychology methods, including careful control experiments and examining failure modes to learn cognition.
Mitchell cited Clever Hans to show how subtle cues can mislead conclusions about an animal's arithmetic ability, underscoring skepticism in AI research.