UK Researchers Say AI Needs More Animal Sense

The incomplete understanding of human brains and how to endow computers with common sense are among AI's most enduring challenges. New research from DeepMind London, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge argues that common sense in humans is founded on a set of basic capacities that are also possessed by many other animals, and that animal cognition can therefore serve as inspiration for many AI tasks and curricula. In a paper published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences journal this month, the researchers identify just how much AI research might benefit from the field of animal cognition. There is no universally accepted definition of "common sense." While much research has used language as a touchstone, the new paper temporarily sets language aside to focus on other common sense capacities found in non-human animals. They such believe capacities pertaining to the understanding of everyday concepts such as objects, space, and causality are also a baseline for humans, and this "foundational layer of common sense, which is a prerequisite for human-level intelligence" could provide something that's lacking in today's AI systems.