A critique of pure learning and what artificial neural networks can learn from animal brains

Not long after the invention of computers in the 1940s, expectations were high. Many believed that computers would soon achieve or surpass human-level intelligence. Herbert Simon, a pioneer of artificial intelligence (AI), famously predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do"--to achieve general AI. Of course, these predictions turned out to be wildly off the mark. In the tech world today, optimism is high again.