How human brains hold the key to smarter artificial
intelligence?
By Karishma,
Understanding how our brains sustain 'internal evolution'
– and help us to learn complicated skills such as language – could one day lead
to smarter robots.
Why is it that humans are capable of learning
complicated languages from such an early age? And how does the solution to a
‘perceptive problem’ suddenly get into your head first thing the morning after?
Intuition, a ground-breaking EU project led by one of
the current pioneers of theoretical evolutionary biology, has achieved a better
understanding of exactly how we resolve problems, by examining how ideas in our
brains could evolve throughout our lives. The searching could have implications
for programming problem-solving robotics that think for themselves and advance
our knowledge of how human language is developed.
'Open-ended human problem solving and open-ended
learning remain far superior to what can currently be achieved by machines, ‘In
particular, robots lack adequate algorithms for understanding problem solving
in various contexts, which is basic in human understanding.'
By perception, we mean the ability that we humans can
create new and more useful representations of a problem, in order to allow for
solutions other than by 'brute force', and guide future actions. This enables
us to deal problems that are not routine in a highly creative manner, something
that artificial intelligence has difficulty in doing.
For example, over several years we learn through
experience and play how to walk, talk and socialise, while the development of
complicated, knowledge-expanding ideas such as Einstein's theory of relativity
can take one decade or more. Often a 'eureka' solution can pop into your head
without prior warning, suggesting that unconscious processing plays a crucial
role in awareness.