AI Robot Learns Just Like a Human Child

Imagine a robot that learns like a child. That's exactly what two researchers have created-at least that's the idea. The new robot has to learn everything from scratch, starting from nothing.

"We're still pretty far away from accurately modelling all aspects of a living child's brain, but the algorithms that handle sound and image processing are inspired by biology," said Oyvind Brandtsegg, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We've given it almost no pre-defined knowledge on purpose."

The new robot is called [self.]. It can analyze sound through a system based on the human ear, and can learn to recognize images using a digital model of how nerve cells in the brain handle sensory impressions. It's designed to learn entirely from sensory input with no pre-defined knowledge database, so that its learning process will resemble that of a human child in early life.

The robot picks a sound that a person appears to be emphasizing and responds by playing other sounds that it associates with this while projecting a neural representation of its association between the sound and pictures.

When the robot was left open to the public, it absorbed more and more impressions of different people. Certain people, like guides, affected it more, because it "saw" them more often. The robot also learned to filter input.

The robot also "thinks" about words during its downtime. When a word is said in a certain way five times and then in a different way once, the robot learned to filter away the standout and concentrate on the most common way.

The new robot could be huge for the development in artificial intelligence. That said, it's still in development as AI is refined.

Related Stories

Hovering Hawkmoths Slow Their Brains to See at Night and Track Robot Flowers

Minecraft Video Game May Help Create Artificial Intelligence for Robots

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).