Thank you for downloading the more or less podcast. We all weekly guide to the numbers

all around us in the news and in life. And I'm Tim Haafard.

Will machines eventually take over the world and beat humans at their own game? The question

isn't just a movie plot these days, there are daily advances in the technology of artificial

intelligence which should give everyone pause for thought.

But there is at least one area where we humans might retain an edge. Dr. Janne Mabine is a

British mathematician, turned educator and writer. He's just penned a new book called Mathematical

Intelligence. He thinks that humans can still beat computers in at least one field and it might

surprise you. It's maths. Sure, computers are fabulous at adding stuff up but Janne Mabine says

there's a lot more to maths than that. You say in the book that machines are not as good at maths

as humans which I think is a surprising statement to a lot of people. It's that because we don't

really understand computers or is it because we don't really understand maths. Maybe a bit of both.

So I guess we have to define our terms. What do we mean by maths here? Now I think the way many

people experience mathematics in terms of how they're taught at school, how it's portrayed in the

wider media, often is distilled into this bare calculational form. Everything comes down to

executing calculations and routine procedures and algorithms. In other words, the things that

computers can do very well. Once they crept past us, they just searched ahead and we have no hope

of competing with our silicon counterparts on those types of thinking skills. But the good

news is that if you ask a mathematician or a maths enthusiast, what their subject is really about,

they'll tell you that calculation has only ever really been a footnote. Of course it's part of

doing maths. There are numbers involved in mathematics. There are calculations but mathematics

really is a much more diverse and holistic thinking system than I think many people realise and

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