What Animals Can Teach AI About Intelligence

Usually, AI proves very successful when its goals are focused on a single task, like playing a game with clearly defined rules. It's trying to set up a system to handle greater complexity that has proved elusive for AI. Some researchers believe studying how animals learn can open the way to more comprehensive mastery of tasks for AI. An appreciation for the cognitive abilities demonstrated by animals is the motivation for the Animal-AI Olympics. As described on its YouTube video, "Instead of providing a problem to solve, we will provide an arena in which we will test your entry for many simple cognitive abilities using methods from the animal cognition literature."