Psychologist Alison Gopnik explains what children can do that AI can't
AlisonGopnik · x · 2026-09-03
Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik published a long-form essay in The Humanist Review of AI using three stories — a golem, a pot of stone soup, and a digital child — to argue what AI still can't do. Key points: humans' natural animism makes us imagine AI as a new kind of person; AI is better understood as a collectively summoned tool like stone soup; and AI resembles Odysseus using fictive texts to change its behavior, echoing Anthropic's persona selection paper and Murray Shanahan's views. Children, by contrast, learn through active exploration and caregiver relationships that AI lacks.
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