AI2: The Missing Link: Experience

umber 2 of a 3-part blog. Let's recap:

1. For most of the 20th century, we thought humans, and therefore machines, learned by being told what to do. This meant that learning was the process of acquiring more and more rules; rules that were rational and therefore governed by logic.
2. Then we did the Wason Selection Task, demonstrating that either a) humans are irrational, i.e., not good at logic or b) rationality is not governed by logic after all.
3. We then talked about Star Trek, of course, showing that neither Logic (Spock) nor its supposed nemesis, Emotion (Bones), were enough by themselves for rational decision making. For that, we need the leadership and wisdom that comes from Experience (Kirk).
4. We ended by asking the question:

So, if the acquisition of logical rules isn’t learning, what is? 
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And the answer is...

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Drum Roll Playing Drums GIFfrom Drum Roll GIFs

"Learning is bringing your experience to bear
on new information."​
                                                                                                       Mitch Moldofsky

Say what?

So consider the big box your experience, i.e., all you have learned from interacting with the universe so far. And consider the circle to be any new information you receive by any of your five senses or unknown senses. Your experience is how you interpret that new information: relevant or irrelevant, actionable or ignorable, worth remembering or expendable, etc. Since everyone's experience is different, everyone's interpretation of new information is different as well, which is why it's so hard for us to agree on anything--this theory included.

That would be the end of the story, except for one thing: the big box of experience KEEPS CHANGING all the time, because the little circle of new information KEEPS CHANGING all the time.

So what we really have is a situation like this--a dynamical system where both our internal, remembered and embodied experience and our external, sense-driven experiences—aka, “new information”—keep changing and influencing one another on an ongoing basis.

This how we learn, for instance, that Pluto is no longer a planet. Fortunately, he is still a Disney character, so that's a relief.​

via GIPHY

How does this apply to AI?
Let’s try the Wason Selection Task again, this time with a slight twist.

Your job is to test this rule: “If someone is drinking alcohol, then that person must be age 18 or older.” From where you are standing, you can observe four people: a person drinking soda (you can’t see how old they are); a person drinking beer (you can’t see how old they are); a 30-year-old person (you can’t see what they’re drinking) and a 16-year-old person (you can’t see what they’re drinking). Which of these four items must be checked in order to make sure the rule is being followed? 

Source: Puzzlewocky.com

Answer below.

Original problem: “If one of these cards has an even number on one side then its other side is green.” Which cards would you turn over, without turning over any cards unnecessarily?" Answer: 8 and Blue

​You turned over the girl and the beer, right? To see what she was drinking, and to see who is drinking the beer. News flash, this is EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM as the original.

People are better at the drinking variation because it gives CONTEXT, with allows you to bring your experience to bear upon .Neat, huh?

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You see the problem? If we really want computers to think like we do, we can’t just tell them what to do, we have to make it so they can figure it out for themselves. 

How do we do that? Read the next blog and find out!

(This is so exciting!)
Mitch

FYI, I'm speaking at the now-online LEARN2021 conference, albeit by video.
​Check it out. (NOTE: The dates have changed--they haven't sent an updated promo card.)