Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!voder!dtg.nsc.com!andrew
From: andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head       )
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: the baby bootstrap (determining input...)
Summary: not so different, perhaps
Message-ID: <725@berlioz.nsc.com>
Date: 4 Mar 90 13:20:25 GMT
References: <720@berlioz.nsc.com> <6603@hydra.gatech.EDU> <5061@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Organization: National Semiconductor, Santa Clara
Lines: 75

In article <5061@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, ld231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Lawrence Detweiler) writes:
> >Note that babies bootstrap, so that "knowing what to look for" becomes
> >increasingly sophisticated.
> 
> This deserves a thread of its own.  This is what is so remarkable about
> the human neural net, in my opinion: it doesn't have something feeding
> it the "right" answers to its neurons.  The whole thing is
> self-contained.  The accomplishments of conventional computational
> neural nets are not so grandiose considering that they require such
> intensive and explicit training.  This is not the tired point that
> "computational neural nets pale in comparison to the brain" and
> therefore they can never hope to rival or surpass it (begging the
> question).  Rather, it is suggesting that there may be something
> fundamentally different about current NNs and the one in the brain.[...]

Well, I have to disagree with this. I used the word "bootstrap"
intentionally; even a bootstrap needs a seed. In the case of a baby,
there is strong evidence to suggest that certain vigilance functions
are hardwired from day one, an important one being face recognition.
The effect of this "vigilance filtering" is to effectively provide a
narrow subset of "environmental inputs to which attention must be
paid". Then there is the mimicry response, whereby the baby learns
to mirror the filtered facial expressions, etc. The upshot of all this
hardwired stuff is that the baby is effectively acting as a supervised
net (no offence intended!) and is far away from acting as a totally
unsupervised autonomous entity.

The key point about the bootstrap is that, from small attentionally-
concentrated beginnings, the remarkable panoply of behaviours emerges
finally.

> Likewise one could argue that in current computational nets there is
> only input (the stimulus and correct response, so to speak).  But the
> relationship between stimulus and response is firmly established by the
> EXTERNALLY DERIVED learning rule.  In any real brain this is precisely
> what must be learned!  It must be INTERNALLY derived.  How does one
> neuron learn what influences it, what it is modeling?

Mothers typically indulge in mimicry themselves (it seems sometimes as
this is nearly instinctual, albeit adult behaviour!). Observing correlations
between one's own responses and the responses of the object of attention
(by the baby) could even remove the requirement for "hardwired mimicry",
which is better parsimony.

> One might argue that the role of heredity is to create a minimal
> structure that experience can build on (the kind of heredity that makes
> a baby respond differently to a smile vs. frown, track an object with
> eyes, etc.).  Permit me some indulgence in the radical: suppose that
> intelligence can exist INDEPENDENT of heredity!  That is, heredity is
> only a way of optimizing learning (by starting from more than scratch),
> but it is not necessary for learning to take place.  The development of
> the child suggests this idea, which is in direct opposition to every
> "supervised" learning scheme in use.  (I suggest the terms "autonomous"
> or "automatic" vs. "manipulated" instead of supervised vs. unsupervised.)

Well, I'm attempting to refute this. You are postulating extra entities -
in this case, brains which possess eldritch properties no artificial net
possibly could (a bit like Penrose) and there really seems to be no need
for the extra axioms.

> The ultimate neural network would probably allow direct modification of
> its weights (like in artificial models) and also "automatic" mode (like
> in the brain).  You'd get the best of both worlds.  This is a convincing
> argument (among others) that if an artificial brain is ever devised with
> the capabilities of the human one, then there also exists one of the
> former that is superior to any of the latter.

In that manipulating people is often deemed necessary, and requires a
massive investment of effort in many cases (ask any salesman), I'd have
to agree that you'd have the Ultimately Pliable Person there!
This might well give a healthy boost to any consumer-oriented economy...
Or is that a level of intelligence below what you meant? :-)
-- 
...........................................................................
Andrew Palfreyman	andrew@dtg.nsc.com	Albania before April!