Teaching Robot Learners To Ask Good Questions

garthsundem writes "I disagree with this article's opening line: 'Within a decade, personal robots could become as common in U.S. homes as any other major appliance.' Haven't we been promised this since the 50s? But I'm fascinated by the rest — how do you teach humans to teach robots? Or, more precisely, how can you teach robots to teach humans to teach robots? The idea that designers can put a flexible platform in a robot, allowing users to determine functionality, is pretty interesting. The lead researcher for this project said, 'People are not so good at teaching robots because they don't understand the robots' learning mechanism. It's like when you try to train a dog, and it's difficult because dogs do not learn like humans do. We wanted to find out the best kinds of questions a robot could ask to make the human-robot relationship as 'human' as it can be.'"

Comments

I have a personal robot

[geekoid]

Gets my mail, answers my phone it I want it to, looks for music I might like, l lets me know of up coming social event. Play chess against it.

It's called a 'smart phone'. Hell, with minimal effort I can have it follow me on it's own accord.
I mean, some Lego motors and gear, and it can us it's camera to follow me. Might take a day.

Robotics is dead

[Spiked_Three]

To some extent I disagree that dogs do not learn as humans. Its a reward and/or pain/discipline system and it works well on both. Robots on the other hand, may not feel reward or pain, so something new does need to be developed.

I will agree with his disagreement on the first line. As a retired hobbyist I am hugely directly connected to the current state of robots. They are stagnant, dead, and useless with the exception of the Vacuum cleaner bots. There are some super high end stuff going on, but it is far more akin to smart remote control. Computers are not anywhere near fast enough at present. And as long as we stick to the von neumann model for their design probably will not be for 20-30 more years.

But i have been an advocate of having moral discussion now, before it is too late. Saw a good short clip this am; http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/disturbing-and-poignant-video.html about a robot that becomes self aware. Do we kill her, or let her be free? If we let her be free, what incentive ($$$) does anyone have to build her? If she is a slave (ie sold for profit) can we justify the treatment of any self aware being that way? And if so, why not retroactive?

Anyhow, back top the subject; we need research in that area. Today for a current project I am looking at http://mnemstudio.org/path-finding-q-learning-tutorial.htm for ideas on what is going on now. I assume it the field will advance.