Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!boulder!ccncsu!longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu!ld231782 From: ld231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Lawrence Detweiler) Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets Subject: Re: the baby bootstrap (determining input...) Message-ID: <5130@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> Date: 6 Mar 90 19:41:50 GMT References: <725@berlioz.nsc.com> <720@berlioz.nsc.com> <6603@hydra.gatech.EDU> <5061@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> Sender: news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU Reply-To: ld231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Lawrence Detweiler) Organization: Colorado State U. Center for Computer Assisted Engineering Lines: 84 >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". The idea of "a narrow subset" sounds inconsistent with supervised (manipulative) learning, where instead EVERY function is implied by the selective reinforcement from the backpropagation rule. I acknowledge that there are hardwired vigilance functions. I suggest that they are not necessary for learning: they only optimize it. >Then there is the mimicry response, whereby the baby learns >to mirror the filtered facial expressions, etc. When I said that a baby "learns to learn" I mean that everything that looks like learning--including the mimicry response--may be a simple consequence of laws that are predominantly dependent on interactive sensory experience (Piaget's `circular reaction' referred by Gaudiano) and NOT (perhaps whatsoever) on mental heredity. >The key point about the bootstrap is that, from small attentionally- >concentrated beginnings, the remarkable panoply of behaviours emerges >finally. That you call them "vigilance functions" suggests not. They only serve to focus attention, the precursor to learning; they are not the mechanism of learning itself. Thus the central issue lies elsewhere and attention-focused beginnings are merely a peripheral consideration. >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. This is more evidence for an autonomous system. The idea that the final outcome depends not on some intrinsic model but on the stimulii in the environment precludes some overseeing, manipulating mechanism. [intelligence without heredity?] >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. No, I think you have it backwards. It is supervised mechanisms that would be extraordinarily difficult to encode computationally--we would have to understand the entire function of the brain's heredity. If intelligence is autonomous (as I propose) it would be drastically simpler to duplicate it in synthetic forms. You see, in the supervised approach one might say "learning depends on an intrinsic ideal model toward which the system converges." In autonomous learning one might say "learning depends on individual sensory experiences arising from the environment." Surely discovering the rules that govern the former would be much more difficult to discover than that of the latter. There's only so many ways something can react (change in accordance) to a stimulus, but an overwhelming complexity in heredity. >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 most plausible case for "supervised" (manipulated) learning in the baby is in the sensations of pleasure and pain. Presumably these are "hardwired". But how much of a baby's behavior is goverened by merely direct (physical) sensation of pleasure and pain? I think one can see that the vast majority of human experience is free of these direct reinforcements that appear to be the only possible biological analogues of manipulative learning. Don't you think you would feel it if all your learning was governed by some overseeing mechanism of reward and punishment? Pain and pleasure themselves may be functions that are conditioned into us by our environment in the classical Pavlovian way. In my first message I couldn't think of a term that was applicable. I remember it now: the idea of manipulative learning sounds like just another scheme of the homunculus--a little man inside our heads. In this case the man is disguised in our heredity that "oversees" the brain's correct development through manipulative techniques. This shows how the whole idea of supervision in the brain is hard to believe. What guides the guide? The idea that heredity is the homunculus is a clever idea because we reach a dead end.