Babybot Learns Like You Did

holy_calamity writes "A European project has produced this one-armed 'babybot' that learns like a human child. It experiments and knocks things over until it can pick them up for itself. Interestingly the next step is to build a fully humanoid version that's open source in both software and hardware."

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AI Learning

[fatduck]

From TFA: "The goal is to build a humanoid 2-year-old child," explains Metta. This will have all of Babybot's abilities and the researchers hope it may eventually even learn how to walk. "It will definitely crawl," says Metta, "and is designed so that walking is mechanically possible." Not a bad goal at all, and if it's open source they can't cheat by promoting a specific goal such as walking in the software. Reminds me of Prey where they couldn't figure out how to get the nanomachine swarm to fly so they let its AI "learn" how to do it on its own.

There is more to a 2-year-old than walking

[Flyboy Connor]

The goal is to build a humanoid 2-year-old child," explains Metta. This will have all of Babybot's abilities and the researchers hope it may eventually even learn how to walk.

A fun project, and potentially a good step on the road towards human-like intelligence. However, the "2-year-old" remark is again one of those far-fetched promises that is a loooooooooooooong way off. Making a robot-arm play with a rubber ducky is one thing, letting a robot understand what a rubber ducky is, is quite another. Making a robot crawl is one thing, but letting a robot crawl with a self-conscious purpose, again is quite another.

Fortunately, one of the researcher in TFA admits that 20 computers with a neural network on each is no replacement for a human brain. But the 2-year-old remark follows later, and is evidently entered as a way to generate funding. It sounds cool, but it is not what the result of this project will be. I assume the researchers know this all too well. Or perhaps they have no children of their own.