HACKER Q&A
📣 p-e-w

Is there a mental task at which average humans can still beat computers?


It's certainly not: Anything that can be solved easily by computation (obviously), information retrieval, memory, general knowledge, creative writing, poetry, drawing, composition, ...

What, if anything, is left?

Please keep in mind I'm asking about the average human, not the average HN user with a PhD in whatever.


  👤 cratermoon Accepted Answer ✓
There's a philosopher name Hubert Dreyfus who has written a couple of books about the subject. In 1972 he published What Computers Can't Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence, a 3rd edition published in 1992 was titled What Computers Still Can't Do. He also co-wrote, with his brother Stuart, Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer

If you're not up for a whole book, there a 1965 paper titled "Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence" available at https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2006/P3244... that weighs in at only 98 pages.


👤 billconan
Developing ai models