Sydney Ideas - When (and why) children are smarter than adults, and AI too

Young children are actually better at learning unusual or unlikely principles than adults. Professor Alison Gopnik's research relates this pattern to computational ideas about search and sampling, evolutionary ideas about human life history, and neuroscience findings about plasticity. Alison's hypothesis is that the evolution of our distinctively long, protected human childhood allows an early period of broad hypothesis search, exploration and creativity before the demands of goal-directed action set in. Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD from Oxford University.