When the Machine Meets the Human Mind: What is the boundary between vital and artificial intelligence?

In Vital Intelligence, Artificial Stupidity, Alexandre Castro Caldas opens the door to the debate on whether artificial intelligence exists (or not?), and helps us move forward in the search for answers that have yet to be constructed.

At a time when a quick Google search on artificial intelligence floods us with concepts such as: revolution, challenges, ease, new digital order, machines versus Man, distrust, problem-solving and advantages, it is urgent to explore the nature of intelligence and its relationship with machines. This is exactly what the prestigious neurologist Alexandre Castro Caldas seeks to do in his latest book - Vital Intelligence, Artificial Stupidity. The book hits the bookstores on March 6th, published by Contraponto.

It is undeniable that artificial intelligence is increasingly present in our daily lives, so the question that remains is: can machines really produce intelligence or do they just simulate a copy of human intelligence?

Combining knowledge from various fields such as biology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience, Castro Caldas presents intelligence as a capacity present in all living beings, with different manifestations depending on the species. The book takes a critical look at the concept of artificial intelligence, comparing it to a plastic flower: beautiful, but incapable of achieving the sublime complexity of natural intelligence.

Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio signs the foreword and highlights the book as an urgent invitation to debate and reinforces that “Alexandre Castro Caldas helps us here to walk in search of answers. The answers that it is up to us, the readers and citizens, to build, and not the answers that are ready-made and ready to serve. Hence the urgency of this reading.”

Vital Intelligence, Artificial Stupidity, to be launched just before Brain Week - a global event dedicated to promoting knowledge about neuroscience and how the brain works - is an invitation to reflect on the future of intelligence, not just in machines, but in human beings themselves.