Are Humans Complex AI? Understanding the Overlap & Interplay

With the advent of complex AI and chatbots that fundamentally challenge how we live and work, one can’t help but wonder if we’re just complex AI living in a simulation. TV shows like Westworld have examples of AI behaving just like humans, making decisions, feeling emotions, and so much more. So, are humans complex form of AI, or is there more to it?

Humans aren’t just complex AI because we’re fundamentally different. Humans are biological creatures that can think and have consciousness, whereas AI relies on data and complex algorithms like machine learning to solve problems and synthesize and create content.

The rest of this article will explain all the differences and similarities between AI and humans, how they go about performing different tasks, and why AI can’t replace humans just yet.

AI and Humans Are Fundamentally Different

Human thought is still not fully understood by scientists, even after decades of research. We know that it has to do with neurotransmitters, electrical signals fired between neurons, creating complex patterns when we think. And repeating certain behaviors or patterns reinforces those neural pathways. We also don’t know how our intuition, aka gut feeling, works in conjunction with our brain to think or make decisions.

Shockingly, our digital counterparts are also complex and not fully understood either. We know how AIs fundamentally work the same way we know humans think, but developers have no idea why AI sometimes gives unexpected results or starts misbehaving.

AI uses algorithms to learn how to solve problems or create something. For example, while a human can play 1 game of chess in an hour and learn a bit from it, AI can play thousands against itself and learn significantly more. Ultimately, AI learns how to outplay us in a game because it already knows what to do based on your last move. This is called machine learning.

AI is often described as a black box where you can insert data and get results back. For example, we know that if we give AI 10 pictures of different cats, it’ll be able to create an 11th cat that has, e.g., eyes from cat #3 and a fur pattern from cat #7.

AI can achieve some other pretty amazing feats with the help of deep learning, such as detecting cancer years before it’s developed.

Humans can’t do any of that, at least not as quickly or efficiently. But there are some things humans can do that AI can’t, such as judge based on morality, use our senses to perceive the world, and experience stuff.

AI uses logic and data to make rational decisions, and humans are similar in that regard. Humans often make decisions based on emotions and intuition, and AI makes decisions based on logic, regurgitated data, and limitations.

Similarly, AI may not understand the cultural differences in expressing emotions or why humans lie. We’re much better at reading emotions of others, especially those who are with us all the time or share the same culture.

Humans Are Infinitely More Complex

AI strongly relies on processing power and stored data to perform its tasks. So, as technology keeps improving, so will AI. But it’ll be a long time before AI will be more complex than humans if that ever even happens.

Even though the same AI can be an engineer, a storyteller, a programmer, and a designer, while you’re just 1 of those things, you’re infinitely more complex.

Here’s some data — a single gram of DNA can store around 215 petabytes of data, whereas ChatGPT’s initial database is only 570 GB.

So, what does that mean? Are Humans AI?

No, our DNA stores biological information, whereas AI stores digital information.

Humans vs. AI: How They Do Things

To better understand the topic at hand, let’s look at a few recent use cases of AI to see how it stacks up against humans.

Writing

AI largely writes stories, poems, and other types of content by regurgitating information from its database. For example, it can create a unique story in a never-before-seen setting with characters of your choosing. It’s surprisingly good at this, albeit it’s not very creative.

Any AI-generated content I’ve come across so far has been bland and uninteresting.

Humans are much better at creative thinking and can convey emotions through their writing because they can feel them as well.

While AI is decent enough at giving you some text with decent information quickly, humans are much better at adding important details, personal information, understanding what the reader wants, and more.

Doing Math

It’s no secret that computers and AI have been used to do math. You probably use a calculator more often than you do calculations yourself, as this is one field where AI excels.

Mathematics is often done by following a set of algorithms, and as AI is significantly faster at that than us, it’s able to complete complex mathematical equations almost instantaneously. It’s even made some breakthroughs already.

Humans just aren’t at that level and need to do math step-by-step.

Also, AI is less prone to making mistakes in math.

Creating Art

If you’re on the internet, you must have seen those convincing AI-generated images at some point. Everything from Vikings taking selfies to self-portraits in Van Gogh’s style is now a possibility with AI.

AI is really good at making art or photorealistic images; it’s much better than the average person.

The only caveat is that AI can’t really come up with completely original styles, and it’s severely limited in that. A single artist can create drawings for an entire TV show based on a particular style, whereas AI can merely take that style using that data to create a new character.

Speech

Talking is something so indisputably human that it’s hard to believe that AI can now synthesize speech via text-to-speech. While it can’t really create a convincing voice, it’s now able to use deep learning to create convincing voices of famous people or anybody with a large enough dataset.

Some YouTubers have used AI to train their voice model from their videos and then used it to do voiceovers. And not only does it replicate a person’s voice, but it also replicates their speech patterns, making it almost impossible to tell the difference. And the technology is still in its infancy.

In a few years’ time, AI will likely be able to completely replace voiceovers in videos, even if there’s a famous voice attached.

Needless to say, humans can talk by design, so they don’t need to learn how to sound more like themselves.

Humans Excel at Some Things Compared To AI

Humans are much better at tasks that require complex creative thinking, writing stories, painting, and anything that requires us to experience something.

For instance, AI can tell you that a certain product, like a coffee mug, is good because it’s popular, but it can’t experience drinking from it. So, maybe the handle of that mug is too wide for people with smaller hands, but only somebody who has lived through it could know and tell you.

Also, AI occasionally contradicts itself when writing text, which is something only humans can catch and fix.

As for art, I’ve already explained how AI can only regurgitate paintings based on its dataset, but the dataset wouldn’t even exist without the artists. Artists can invent and reinvent styles, paint anything error-free, and use their imagination.

Same with photographs. While AI can make some convincing photos, the faces in the photos tend to look unnatural, or the people have 8 fingers on each hand, the lighting is off, and so on.

AI also struggles with nuances, especially those related to cultures and languages. Humans that live in a particular culture and speak a particular language understand it much better than AI. This is especially true when the dataset is too small for AI to learn and understand.

Also, AI can’t sense the world. We know the world based on how we perceive it through our senses. And while we can hook up a camera to AI and teach it how to recognize faces and objects, it’s not really experiencing anything. It’s just using algorithms to distinguish between patterns.

Final Thoughts

AI can do some impressive things, but it’s nowhere near as sophisticated as human intelligence. Humans are complex, emotional, biological creatures that can experience things; AI is a set of parameters that uses algorithms to learn and complete tasks based on previous outcomes and logic.