New Books in Technology Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland, "The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines" (Basic Books, 2025)
Oct 29, 2025
Gaurav Suri, an Associate Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University, and Jay McClelland, a Professor at Stanford renowned for his neural network research, dive into the intricacies of the human mind. They explore how our conscious decisions stem from complex brain activity and compare mental emergence to ant colonies. The conversation touches on how artificial neural networks mimic human thought and discusses the implications of AI's evolving role in understanding consciousness, empathy, and decision-making.
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Mind As An Emergent Property
- The mind's properties emerge from interactions among many simple parts rather than from single units.
- Neurons collectively produce thoughts and experiences that individual neurons cannot.
Ant Trail Demonstrates Emergence
- Gaurav recounts placing an obstacle to show ants favor the short pheromone trail over time.
- Individual ants follow simple rules but the colony solves the path problem collectively.
Simplify Neurons To Model Minds
- Neural network models simplify complex neuron behavior into units and graded activations for tractable modeling.
- This abstraction lets researchers study emergent cognition without simulating every biological detail.
