Humans learn from experience to not “do dumb things,” and Facebook chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is trying to create a version of that for robots, saying that systems that learn “models of the world” are our best shot at advancing artificial intelligence. Unlike a rewards/demerits-based reinforcement learning, Facebook’s tack is to instill curiosity, by giving the robot freedom to try new things. With New York University, Facebook also dramatically reduced the number of tries to teach a robotic arm to grasp an object.
Wired reports that the technique is self-supervised learning, in which the robot “tries new things and updates a software model, which can help it predict the consequences of its actions.”
Facebook’s project marries AI and robots, which up until now have been more isolated pursuits, and “robots have remained fairly dumb.” Researchers, however, are now using robots “as platforms to refine [AI] software algorithms.”
“If you solve it in one context, you’ll solve it in the other context,” said LeCun. In this way, “AI is making robots smarter, but robots are also now helping advance AI.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/facebook-turns-to-robots-to-advance-artificial-intelligence/