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Toddlers and artificial intelligence
Nov. 12th, 2015 06:10 pm One of the fascinating things about toddlers is that the more one is aware of how difficult it is to create artificial intelligence, the more impressive are the learning feats that they achieve.
By the age of 1 and a half, Oswin has got a good awareness of where her body is. She can integrate the feedback from numerous nerves and muscles to know not only where her hand currently is, but what combination of muscles (and just look at a human anatomy diagram to see just how many there are in the hand and arm alone) and in what order is required to move her hand to a particular position.
She can coordinate the hand, while at the same time adjusting her body balance to compensate for that movement and avoid falling over.
Science has finally give us walking robots, but even the best of them still walk in a very flat-footed manner. Oswin hasn't got full use of her legs yet. She can toddle quite fast now and is getting some bend in her foot, but it will be a fair time before she is able to run.
Running robots are on the way, will she be able to run before we get a convincing running robot? Hard to say, but I'm sure she'll do it with less computing power.
She also has pattern recognition and an impressive ability to recognise objects of very different visual appearance as belonging to the same category. She knows that an armchair and a dining chair are both 'chairs'.
She understands possessive nouns. "Granny's hand" is different from "Oswin's hand".
She can process instructions given verbally. "Give Grandad the marble"
Within a year, she will be able to speak herself, gradually mastering the incredible complexities of English language and grammar over the next decade.
She will learn to sing, dance, play music, tell jokes and eventually programme computers herself.
Human beings are amazing.
Artificial intelligence is catching up, but the average toddler has a truly amazing skill set. And they're self-replicating too.
https://goo.gl/photos/VFFVbSfAwjuoXCh1A
Sadly, I can't embed this link, but here, she's demonstrating how to fit pieces of helter skelter together. Not easy for a robot, given that the pieces do not start in fixed positions. Also, it was the first time she'd encountered the toy, so no prior programming.
By the age of 1 and a half, Oswin has got a good awareness of where her body is. She can integrate the feedback from numerous nerves and muscles to know not only where her hand currently is, but what combination of muscles (and just look at a human anatomy diagram to see just how many there are in the hand and arm alone) and in what order is required to move her hand to a particular position.
She can coordinate the hand, while at the same time adjusting her body balance to compensate for that movement and avoid falling over.
Science has finally give us walking robots, but even the best of them still walk in a very flat-footed manner. Oswin hasn't got full use of her legs yet. She can toddle quite fast now and is getting some bend in her foot, but it will be a fair time before she is able to run.
Running robots are on the way, will she be able to run before we get a convincing running robot? Hard to say, but I'm sure she'll do it with less computing power.
She also has pattern recognition and an impressive ability to recognise objects of very different visual appearance as belonging to the same category. She knows that an armchair and a dining chair are both 'chairs'.
She understands possessive nouns. "Granny's hand" is different from "Oswin's hand".
She can process instructions given verbally. "Give Grandad the marble"
Within a year, she will be able to speak herself, gradually mastering the incredible complexities of English language and grammar over the next decade.
She will learn to sing, dance, play music, tell jokes and eventually programme computers herself.
Human beings are amazing.
Artificial intelligence is catching up, but the average toddler has a truly amazing skill set. And they're self-replicating too.
https://goo.gl/photos/VFFVbSfAwjuoXCh1A
Sadly, I can't embed this link, but here, she's demonstrating how to fit pieces of helter skelter together. Not easy for a robot, given that the pieces do not start in fixed positions. Also, it was the first time she'd encountered the toy, so no prior programming.
