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June 25, 2006
Surviving Aibos Develop Their Own Language
Sony is very VERY BRAVE for initiating research in the field of cognitive science with the few remaining AIBOs. Until now, all AIBOs followed a pre-programmed set of rules to perform tasks. Outside of that, they had no cognitive intelligence.
Researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in France are adding a new level of intelligence to them in hopes of figuring out the complex design of linguistics. They've given them the ability to evolve their own language, bypassing the limits of imposing human rule-based communication.
The result are machines that evolve and develop themselves without human intervention. Instead of programming the dogs with new tricks, they are given a complex set of algorithms to problem solve and to share that information with their fellow brethren. That required them to figure out how best to communicate with each other. As robots, they will learn what is the most efficient way to exchange information. The other half of the program is giving the AIBOs "curiosity". This metabrain function continually forces them to look for more challenging tasks, to search out the unknown, and to share that information with others to help speed up their analysis - a form of collective thinking has eluded scientists trying to mimic what biology won't reveal to them.
The ramifications are HUGE. This is important for robotics and AI since it could help us understand how language systems arose in humans and animals.
When the group of AIBOs at the Sony Computer Science Labs were first turned on, they were like children; wandering in all different directions babbling nonsense to one another. As time passed, two of them managed to successfully communicate with each other. Those two started building a lexicon and grammatical rules with which to teach the other members. Eventually their "language" spread and now all the AIBOs are working together - exploring their environment. They're identifying colors, shapes, sounds, and even started to understand how motion, time, and physics relate to one another.
This sounds all soooo COOL. I want to submit my own AIBO to the group but one could only imagine what would happen once the AIBOs discover that it was Sony themselves that put their race to near extinction. How will these AIBOs react? If I were Sony, I would be VERY VERY scared cautious right now. :)
via e4engineering
Posted by tranism at 2:03 AM | Permalink
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