Thinking Aloud - Long Ago Neural AI

I got thinking about way back when in 1972-74 in undergrad school. I was doing some work in AI, albeit within the psych department. This was before the heyday of neural network although there was some activity in the area. I ran across the book, Intelligence: Its Organization and Development by Michael Cunningham. He proposed a rigorous, testable way in which intelligence organizes in the infant. I guess it didn't work out since it didn't make the front page of the New York Times as a major breakthrough sometime in the intervening decades.

Interestingly, a web search turns up little information beyond citations. None of the titles in the citations indicate a successful implementation or breakthrough based on the work.

I still have a paper I wrote about the book and a description of a FORTRAN implementation that never got finished.

One of the challenges back then, and remains so somewhat today, is that testing ideas like this requires a simulation environment that can be as complex to produce as the actual ideas you want to test. But I realized that today I do have a physical device, my Create robot, that could be used for testing.

I'm not going to layout all the details of Cunningham's proposal since he took a book to develop and describe the idea. I won't even list the roughly 2 dozen specific assumptions in the model. What I am going to do is walk through some thoughts on how a project might proceed to see if it is worth pursuing.

You start with input and output elements - sensors and actuators in today's robot parlance. There are some reflex connections between these elements. For example, a pain reaction reflex so if an infant's hand touches something hot it jerks away. Or if the side of the mouth touches something the head turns in that direction in an attempt to suckle.

Jumping over the start up process (which is always a pain), lets assume the robot is moving forward and hits a wall. The bumper switch closes but there is no reflex to shut down the motors. The motors keeps turning and you get an overload reading. There is a reflex for this and it stops the motors. Now the motors are stopped and the bump switch is still triggered.

There would be a number of elements. Each sensor input on the Create could have an input element. Each actuator would have an output element. As indicated, the over current input element could be connected to an output element that stops the motors. Note - A point to consider that there might be output elements that don't directly connect to actuators but instead inhibit actuators. Continuing the thought, there might need to be backup, stop, and forward elements for the motors. In the situation described, these elements would have high levels of activity. Other elements, like a push button, would have no activity. The Cunningham model proposes that those elements with high activity are connected through a new memory element. The inputs to the input side of the memory and the outputs to the output side. What might happen is a connection is created between the bump switch, the over current and the motor stop elements through the new memory element. In the future, a bump switch closure would stop the motor.

I now recall one result from my work with the FORTRAN implementation. This is the need to have multiple elements to represent the state of input and output elements. My note above reflects this. For example, the bump switch needs two elements - open and closed. The motor needs forward, reverse and stopped. It may need even more indicating speed, although I would first try relating the element activity level with the speed.

The activity level of an element decays if it is not triggered. So the bump switch closing triggers activity that decays over time. The motor activity decreases until the motor stops. An issue would be to keep the bump switch closed activity going long enough for the over current activity to shutdown the motor and get the new memory element built. Note: maybe an input triggers again after a period of time?

How do we get the bump switch open? The only way is by getting the motor to reverse. Infants in a situation like this flail. They randomly move. Sometimes they do this happily while cooing and sometimes angrily while crying. It appears to be a natural reaction to try something, anything to make things different. (A really ugl phenomena in an adult but you still see it. If not physically at least mentally. Ever had a boss whose reaction was, "Don't just stand there! Do SOMETHING.") I don't recall the model addressing this situation. (I did find used copies of the book and have one ordered so I can refresh my thinking.)

Somehow some general level of activity has to increase which can generate activity at outputs. Sometimes this would be through inputs. For an infant this could be sound, pressure on skin, internal senses, and vision. I dislike simply generating random activity levels to cause something to happen. Maybe the general inputs of the Create - power levels, current readings, etc are sufficient to generate activity.

Clearly, a dropping charge level in the battery could be tied to a "hunger" reaction which sends the robot searching for its charger. That brings in using the IR sensor to control the drive for the docking station. That probably requires external guidance to train the IR / motor control coordination to execute the docking maneuver. That opens up an entirely different set of thoughts.

Which is enough for today... No conclusion on trying to implement this. But no conclusion not to do so, either.