If the Wright Brothers could have used AI to guide their decision making, it's almost certain they would never have gotten off the ground. That's because, points out Teppo Felin of Utah State University and Oxford, all the evidence said human flight was impossible. So how and why did the Wrights persevere? Felin explains that the human ability to ignore existing data and evidence is not only our Achilles heel, but also one of our superpowers. Topics include the problems inherent in modeling our brains after computers, and the value of not only data-driven prediction, but also belief-driven experimentation.
Welcome to Econ talk conversations for the curious part of the Library of economics and Liberty.
I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Today is March 26, 2024, and my guest is Tepo Felin, the Douglas D.
Anderson professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.
He's also an associate scholar at Oxford University.
This is Tepo's second appearance on Econ Talk.
He was last here in July of 2018 to discuss rationality.
We have an even broader topic today, thinking.
What is it?
What does it mean for human beings to think?
Are we about to be surpassed by artificial thinking?
Many people think so, but not Tepo, as far as I understand Tepo.
Welcome back to Econ TALK.
Thanks for having me, Ross.
We're going to base our conversation today loosely on a recent article you wrote, theory is all you need, AI, human cognition and decision making, co written with Matthias Holwig of Oxford.
You write in the beginning the abstract of the paper that many people believe, quote, due to human bias and bounded rationality, humans should or will soon be replaced by AI in situations involving high level cognition and strategic decision making.