The most sophisticated AIs are still far from being able to solve problems that human four-year-olds accomplish with ease. Despite the impressive name, artificial intelligence largely consists of techniques to detect statistical patterns in large data sets. There is much more to human learning. Children are active learners; they don’t just passively soak up data like AIs do.
Four-year-olds can immediately recognize cats and understand words, but they can also make creative and surprising new inferences that go far beyond their experience. Looking at what children do, building curiosity into machines and allowing them to actively interact with the world might be a route to more realistic and wide-range learning to advance AI.
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