Understanding AI Could Hold Up A Mirror To How We Think

Machine learning algorithms utilizing neural networks are responsible for making many decisions in our society today. In a previous article, I discussed how AI and neural nets, despite their name, "think" in very different ways than a human would. Yet, while we have many differences, neural networks can also give us a little bit of insight into how our minds work. Supervised learning methods, methods to make a prediction based on data, are often used in machine learning algorithms. In a recent paper in Minds and Machines, David Watson of the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Touring Institute summarizes three ways that supervised learning methods can make predictions in similar ways to the human mind.