This is a well-reasoned question, and something I think many people grapple with when they first dig deeper into machine learning. There are a couple things her

This is a well-reasoned question, and something I think many people grapple with when they first dig deeper into machine learning. There are a couple things here: 1. Yes, most machine learning approaches are explicitly about sophisticated pattern recognition. To be clear, people working on machine learning have never been unclear about this. On this note, I'd recommend checking out some of the work done by Arthur Samuel, the man who coined the term "machine learning." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Samuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Samuel 2. Related to the above, there is a common conflation of the goals of machine learning research and our more sci-fi, AGI ambitions. The goal of a given model, typically, is to make predictions that score well on a given task. Generating passably human text, classifying images, whatever. I don't know of any recently released models whose stated purpose is to recreate complete human intelligence. 3. If we are going to judge machine learning efforts by their ability to recreate the exact mechanisms of human intelligence, we first need a much clearer image of what those mechanisms are.