Naomi Michalowicz // My two-year-old daughter has two words with which to describe food: yummy and yucky. For sound, she can distinguish between “big noise” and “very quiet.” She has a significantly broader vocabulary when it comes to sight: big and small, green, blue, or red, and the capacious description that may apply to anything…
Author: NaomiMichalowicz
Naomi Michalowicz is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s English and Comparative Literature Department. Her dissertation project explores the concept of intelligence, and how the tumultuous history of intelligence definitions, testing, and measurement has shaped representations of human minds in 20th-century novels. Naomi’s interests focus on the intersection of literature and cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and developmental and educational psychology. Naomi holds a BA in English Literature and Classics from Tel Aviv University.
Stranger Things; or, Why ’80s Nostalgia is Good For You
Naomi Michalowicz // Stranger Things, Netflix’s hit show about kids fighting eldritch terrors in 1980s suburbia, has just concluded its fourth season. An obvious appeal of the show is its shameless indulgence in ’80s nostalgia, hitting every cliche of representing the decade—bicycles, arcades, music, quaint technology, bad hair, and of course, the full range of…
From Jane Austen to Chatbots: Using Conversation to Judge Intelligence
Naomi Michalowicz // Chatbots, those little pop-up virtual assistance you encounter at the bottom of every page on every website of every company, who cheerfully ask “what can I help you with?”, are not as smart as we’d like them to be. Often frustratingly obtuse, the virtual assistant is incapable of answering your questions or…
Is Your Baby Even Human? The Science, and Science Fiction, of Observing Babies
Naomi Michalowicz // Babies are full of potential. Every parent, looking at their infant child, will inevitably ask themselves, who will this baby become? What will he like doing? What will her strengths, abilities, and skills, turn out to be? It’s impossible not to wonder what the future holds for a small baby when their…