Blueprints Of Intelligence

Philipp Schmitt is an artist, designer, researcher and 2019-21 Transformations of the Human fellow at the Berggruen Institute. When Albert Einstein died in 1955, the pathologist tasked with the autopsy identified the cause of death and then, allegedly on a whim, cut open Einstein's skull and removed his brain for scientific study. Perhaps he hoped that he'd be able to identify its crucial elements, to be able to hold "intelligence" itself in his hands. The brain turned out to be average in weight, and still to this day we have no neurological insights into its intelligence. Artificial intelligence researchers follow a different approach to figure out what constitutes intelligence: recreate it, at least in parts.