8 ms·

Can we go with 'incomplete' rather than 'false'? :) One of the most interesting areas of study for me is early childhood motor learning which is a fascinating c

Can we go with 'incomplete' rather than 'false'? :) One of the most interesting areas of study for me is early childhood motor learning which is a fascinating combination of unsupervised, reinforced, and imitation learning. There are even significant intrinsic knowledge (instinctual/reflexive/morphological) effects. Also I really like to encompass non-human learning when talking about this stuff to remind myself of all the work nature did before we got to cultural transmission of knowledge.

eanzenberg 9y ago
Please describe what "unsupervised learning" a child may be doing.
- function_seven 9y ago
  Language acquisition. Sure, parents will point at an object and say, "Ball", "Chair", "Food", etc. But they don't do this for the conjunctions and interjections and prepositions. Nor for most of the 10,000 words a child will learn in the first few years of life. Children learn the rules of grammar long before they realize there are any rules at all. Tenses and plurals, etc.
  - eanzenberg 9y ago
    It's amazing how little people on this site know or understand intelligence, artificial and human. You would be surprised how much infants learn from listening around them and how long it takes to learn that language, and how a brain interprets language was formed through so many years of evolution to be highly tuned to learn language fast.
    - function_seven 9y ago
      We're arguing past each other then. I have no doubt that evolution is the essential thing that made us capable of unsupervised learning. That's not the central point of the debate for me. What I'm talking about is the problem of replicating that ability (unsupervised learning) in AI systems. We don't have the luxury of billions of years of evolution to do it. So we need to engineer another way. I understood your previous comments as diminishing the sheer amount of unsupervised learning we do as humans.
      - eanzenberg 9y ago
        Yes you're an idiot with an army of trolls ready to downvote me. Read the above comments to get a sense of how much of an idiot you are about intelligence.
        sctb 9y ago
        This comment seriously violates the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please stop and re-read them.
- felippee 9y ago
  Learning to crawl. Learning to perceive depth. Learning to walk. Learning to pick objects. Learning to hold balance. Learning to hold balance while picking an object. Learning to handle liquids (such as food or drink). Learning to avoid dangerous situations. Learning to ride on a bike. Learning to see. Learning to interact with other agents. And so on and so on. The list is almost endless. In all of those cases, if there is any supervision it is minimal.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    Even before: learning to swallow in the womb. There's definitely no reinforcement from other humans involved in that, and it's fundamental that they learn it in the womb because it would be too late to learn it with milk.
    - eanzenberg 9y ago
      That's been passed down over 3.5 billion years to form the DNA that creates that part of the brain in an infant. AKA pre-trained.
      - bonzini 9y ago
        Not really, they develop it by sucking on their thumbs, drinking amniotic fluid, etc. You can see it develop, and you can see how premature babies have issues with it. Adding "breathe" to sucking and swallowing is even harder for preemies. Starting to suck when they feel something on their lips _is_ a reflex though, it isn't learnt.
        flamedoge 9y ago
        reflex = pre-trained?
        bonzini 9y ago
        More or less, yes. They usually disappear before the first year. Many later reappear in a more refined and voluntary way, which is learned rather than pre-trained.

eanzenberg 9y ago

Please describe what "unsupervised learning" a child may be doing.

function_seven 9y ago
Language acquisition. Sure, parents will point at an object and say, "Ball", "Chair", "Food", etc. But they don't do this for the conjunctions and interjections and prepositions. Nor for most of the 10,000 words a child will learn in the first few years of life. Children learn the rules of grammar long before they realize there are any rules at all. Tenses and plurals, etc.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  It's amazing how little people on this site know or understand intelligence, artificial and human. You would be surprised how much infants learn from listening around them and how long it takes to learn that language, and how a brain interprets language was formed through so many years of evolution to be highly tuned to learn language fast.
  - function_seven 9y ago
    We're arguing past each other then. I have no doubt that evolution is the essential thing that made us capable of unsupervised learning. That's not the central point of the debate for me. What I'm talking about is the problem of replicating that ability (unsupervised learning) in AI systems. We don't have the luxury of billions of years of evolution to do it. So we need to engineer another way. I understood your previous comments as diminishing the sheer amount of unsupervised learning we do as humans.
    - eanzenberg 9y ago
      Yes you're an idiot with an army of trolls ready to downvote me. Read the above comments to get a sense of how much of an idiot you are about intelligence.
      - sctb 9y ago
        This comment seriously violates the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please stop and re-read them.
felippee 9y ago
Learning to crawl. Learning to perceive depth. Learning to walk. Learning to pick objects. Learning to hold balance. Learning to hold balance while picking an object. Learning to handle liquids (such as food or drink). Learning to avoid dangerous situations. Learning to ride on a bike. Learning to see. Learning to interact with other agents. And so on and so on. The list is almost endless. In all of those cases, if there is any supervision it is minimal.
- bonzini 9y ago
  Even before: learning to swallow in the womb. There's definitely no reinforcement from other humans involved in that, and it's fundamental that they learn it in the womb because it would be too late to learn it with milk.
  - eanzenberg 9y ago
    That's been passed down over 3.5 billion years to form the DNA that creates that part of the brain in an infant. AKA pre-trained.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      Not really, they develop it by sucking on their thumbs, drinking amniotic fluid, etc. You can see it develop, and you can see how premature babies have issues with it. Adding "breathe" to sucking and swallowing is even harder for preemies. Starting to suck when they feel something on their lips _is_ a reflex though, it isn't learnt.
      - flamedoge 9y ago
        reflex = pre-trained?
        bonzini 9y ago
        More or less, yes. They usually disappear before the first year. Many later reappear in a more refined and voluntary way, which is learned rather than pre-trained.