Marta Halina
About Me
I'm a philosopher in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. I'm also a Fellow of Selwyn College and a Senior Research Fellow in the Kinds of Intelligence Programme at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
My research focuses on issues related to nonhuman animal cognition and communication, artificial intelligence, and mechanistic explanation in biology and cognitive science.
Major Transitions
As we come to appreciate the wealth and diversity of intelligences, the challenge becomes how to make sense of this complexity. How can we comprehend it in a systematic way? We argue that one important piece of the puzzle involves treating the evolution of cognition as a series of major evolutionary transitions.
See our 2023 paper Transitions in Cognitive Evolution.Â
Animal-AI Testbed
Are current AI as smart as crows or honey bees? The Animal-AI Olympics draws on work in animal cognition research to test the capabilities of AI. Using this platform, we have recently shown that AI and children perform similarly on basic navigational tasks, but children perform better on more complex cognitive tests like those requiring object permanence.
Photo by Elsa Loissel