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Making Artificial Intelligence More Human


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An artist's representation of human-like artificial intelligence.

At MIT's Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, leading infant researchers, neurobiologists, and computer scientists will work together to advance artificial intelligence technology.

Credit: imredesiuk/shutterstock

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines recently launched an initiative to develop intelligence that includes not just knowledge, but also an infant's ability to intuit basic concepts of psychology or physics.

The center will include leading infant researchers, neurobiologists, and computer scientists, all working together to advance artificial intelligence technology. "I think this is the greatest problem in science and technology, greater than the origin of the universe or the origin of life or the nature of matter, partly because it's a problem about who we are," says MIT professor and center director Tomoaso Poggio.

For example, the researchers are developing Genesis, software that can be fed a block of text and draw causal links to determine why things happened, detecting concepts such as revenge and completing character assessments.

Other researchers, such as Joshua Tenenbaum, are trying to build a child's mind. "Let's build a road map of cognitive development over the first three years of life, but let's build it in engineering terms--the same terms I would use to build a self-driving car," Tenenbaum says.

Meanwhile, researcher Joel Leibo is developing a vision system that recognizes faces at a glance, even when given the challenge of matching people's faces shown from different angles.

From The Boston Globe
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Abstracts Copyright © 2013 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

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