How a Memory Quirk of the Human Brain Can Galvanize AI

Take a two-year-old that first learns to recognize a dog and a cat at home, then a horse and a sheep in a petting zoo. The kid will then also be able to tell apart a dog and a sheep, even if he can't yet articulate their differences. This ability comes so naturally to us it belies the complexity of the brain's data-crunching processes under the hood. To make the logical leap, the child first needs to remember distinctions between his family pets. When confronted with new categories--farm animals--his neural circuits call upon those past remembrances, and seamlessly incorporate those memories with new learnings to update his mental model of the world.