Beyond AI: the unique power of human thought

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uguste Rodin, ‘The Thinker’. Initially, the work was meant to be part of a sculptural complex dedicated to the Divine Comedy and was intended to represent Dante Alighieri in front of the gates of hell. The sculpture was subsequently given its current title and became universally regarded as an icon of human intellectual activity. Rodin created about twenty versions of his masterpiece: this one is exhibited at the Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice. On the opposite page: a modern interpretation of the work created using artificial intelligence.

 

I still remember the tap-tap-tap of my fingers on my old red Olivetti Valentine typewriter during my journalism exams in the mid-1990s. Each keystroke was deliberate, guiding my thoughts as I carefully organized my ideas. Every letter had to be precise, every sentence well-considered—because once typed, there was no going back.

 

Today, computers finish our sentences, suggest synonyms, and correct mistakes in real time—sometimes even introducing new ones. My life as a journalist has transitioned from the tactile era of paper to the dawning age of artificial intelligence.

 

We’ve made great strides—humans have long dreamed of machines capable of solving our problems. But the machine does not truly ‘understand’ what it sees, nor does it assign value or meaning to the images it processes. It can provide answers, even mimic human creativity, but it lacks awareness. It doesn't know pain, joy, or the beauty of a sudden discovery. It cannot experience the thrill when a story begins to take shape, when you dig deep and uncover a truth no one else has seen.

 

As advanced and sophisticated as artificial intelligence may be, it cannot compete with the magnificent complexity of the human brain.

 

As Blaise Pascal famously said, “Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”

 

In 2018, I interviewed artist Andrea Bianconi for his exhibition Breakthrough at the prestigious Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston, Texas. He described an abstract, spiral work that initially seemed indecipherable to me, much like his performance with a cage on his head. But as he spoke, something shifted in how I viewed the painting; suddenly, I began to grasp its hidden meaning. It was a moment of understanding that is hard to explain—an aesthetic experience no machine could ever replicate.

 

A human brain operates with a fraction of the power consumed by a supercomputer. With just 20 watts of energy—the same as a small light bulb—our brains perform an incredible range of complex functions: from creative problem solving to emotional regulation, from memory to planning for the future. In contrast, a machine like AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence developed by Google that defeated the world Go champion, required thousands of GPUs and tens of megawatts of energy to achieve its feat. Yet, it couldn’t savor the pleasure of victory.

 

This is the true power of human intelligence. We are capable not only of creating but also of reviewing, destroying, rethinking, and redoing.

 

 

 

 

One of the pioneers of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, warned that, left unchecked, technological progress can have dangerous consequences: “The great problem is not to create machines that think, but to create machines that obey.” The problem was theoretically solved by Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics, but there is always a gap between the perfection of science fiction and reality.

 

Looking ahead, one of the most pressing challenges for artificial intelligence is making machines more sustainable. A recent study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that training a single large language model can emit over 284 tons of carbon dioxide—as much as five cars over their entire lifecycles. In contrast, the human brain, with its biological structure, remains the most efficient engine of intelligence ever known—a model of natural sustainability that technology cannot replicate.

 

The true conductor, the only agent capable of composing, decomposing, and harmonizing artificial intelligence, is our brain—natural intelligence.