Mind!

July 5th, 2025| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

The latest is an AI called Centaur. And it can read your mind! So reported researchers, collaborating across several institutions in Germany, the UK, and the USA, in an article published recently in Nature: “A Foundation Model to Predict and Capture Human Cognition.” I.e., it can predict and simulate human behavior in any experiment expressible in natural language.

The human mind is remarkably general. Not only do we routinely make mundane decisions, such as choosing a breakfast cereal or selecting an outfit, but we also tackle complex challenges, such as figuring out how to cure cancer or explore outer space. We learn skills from only a few demonstrations, reason causally and fuel our actions through curiosity. Our versatility defines what it means to be human.”

Which versatility most specialized computer models currently being used do not take into account. But Centaur does. Trained on data from more than 60,000 people making over 10 million decisions, Centaur captures the underlying patterns of how we think, learn, and make choices.

We show that Centaur predicts behaviour of held-out participants (those who are not part of the training data) better than existing cognitive models in almost every single experiment. We then demonstrate that its ability to capture human behaviour also generalizes to held-out experiments (also ones that weren’t used to train the model).”

Quite revolutionary!

Reported Study Finds:

Centaur could also generate realistic human-like behavior when running simulations. In one test involving exploration strategies, the AI achieved performance comparable to actual human participants and showed the same type of uncertainty-guided decision-making that characterizes how people behave.”

What was even more surprising, Centaur’s internal workings had become more aligned with human brain activity, even though it was never expressly trained to match neural data. Learning to predict human behavior with a dataset apparently forced Centaur to develop its own representations that actually mirror how our brains actually process information. Essentially, Centaur reverse-engineered aspects of human cognition just by studying a massive number of our choices.

Good stuff, of course: such a computational model could revolutionize marketing, education, mental health treatment, and product design. But there’s also potentially bad stuff: dangers to privacy, potential for manipulation and evil use by bad actors, etc.. But, then again, that’s true of any new technology.

But one knowing entity, we can fully and absolutely trust!

Yahweh, You have examined me and You know;
You—You have known my sitting and my rising;
You have understood my thought from afar.
My wayfaring and my lying down you have measured,
and [with] all my paths You are familiar.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
[and] behold, Yahweh, You have known it all.
Psalm 139:1–4

He knows his own, and he knows those who aren’t:

For Yahweh knows the path of the righteous,
but the path of the wicked perishes.
Psalm 1:6

The wicked are arrogant:

“How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?”
Psalm 73:11

But God’s people?

I will jubilate and be joyous in Your lovingkindness,
because You see my affliction; You know the distresses of my soul.
Psalm 31:7

And this all-knowing God did not need training on datasets.

Who has ordered the Spirit of Yahweh,
And which person, as His counselor, has made Him know?
With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding?
And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him insight or the way of understanding?
Isaiah 40:13–14

What wondrous knowledge!

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
Romans 11:33

SOURCE: Study Finds; Nature