I wasn't arguing that was the case but felt like the parent's logic would extend to that conclusion. I have three young children and I have observed the same a

I wasn't arguing that was the case but felt like the parent's logic would extend to that conclusion. I have three young children and I have observed the same as you with your niece. However a lot of it is that as children learn cause and effect they are better able to optimize for their desired outcomes. "smarter" is probably a poor choice of words. "more capable" at certain tasks then definitely. The sibling comment to this talks about identifying Legos. My four-year-old can do that because they now know Plato's form of the Lego because they observed me saying the word Lego while holding them to understand what that is. With enough observations I would think that a general purpose AI could identify the forms and then launch more specific AIs for the tasks.