Here we were, celebrating fractional reductions in classification error rates—about as shallow a perceptual achievement as could be imagined—while our own brains filled every moment with such fluent awareness of our world that its vibrancy had become all but invisible to us. Back in the 1970s, the researcher and mathematician Anatol Holt summed up this myopia by saying that AI was a technology that can make a perfect chess move while the room is on fire.
