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Robot Hand Learns How To Learn From Babies

Posted by Zonk on from the everything-i-need-to-know-i-learned-in-the-comments dept.

jcasman writes "Wired's got a piece on building a better robotic hand at Stanford. The new robot is called Stair 1.0, and scientists are hoping to take a cue from human children for how to teach a robot to learn. 'When a computer fails at a task, it spouts an error message. Babies, on the other hand, just try again a different way, exploring the world by grabbing new objects -- shoving them into their mouths if possible -- to acquire additional data. This built-in drive to explore teaches us how to use our brains and bodies. Now a number of hand-focused roboticists are building machines with the same childlike motivation to explore, fail, and learn through their hands.'"

8 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Robot grabbing and shoving things in its mouth by JetlagMk2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I the only one worried here?

    1. Re:Robot grabbing and shoving things in its mouth by ParaShoot · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Hello human, what are you?"

      *nom nom nom*

  2. About time! by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Funny

    'When a computer fails at a task, it spouts an error message. Babies, on the other hand, just try again a different way, exploring the world by grabbing new objects -- shoving them into their mouths if possible -- to acquire additional data

    Access gives me the most amusing error messages. "Error 3417: there is no message for this error" (the message is real, the number I pulled out of my ass).

    But thinking about it, a robot looking for better data might be a good idea, but a computer? That might worrry me.

    Don't forget that a computer, even one running a robot, is just an alectronic abacus, nothing like a human or any other animal's brain. The temptation is to anthropomorphise.

    -mcgrew

    --
    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  3. Re:With the whole... by Frequency+Domain · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...I sure hope they're not testing it out on babies.
    No, they use lawyers and politicians. They were using rats, but too many people protested.
  4. Re:Not too useful by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Funny

    Too bad it doesn't work on Britney Spears...

  5. Let me be the umpteenth... by Nerdposeur · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...to welcome our drooling, pooping robot overlords.

  6. baby programmers? by Essequemodeia · · Score: 1, Funny

    I heard that programmers are getting younger, but this is getting ridiculous.

    1. Re:baby programmers? by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 2, Funny

      well at least they have an excuse for living with thier parents...

      --
      What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?