This AI thinks like a dog

All dog owners can testify to the powerful intelligence of their four-legged friends. Indeed, many dogs provide important services, such as guiding people who are visually impaired, finding lost individuals, or sniffing out drugs and other contraband. These abilities are beyond even the most powerful artificial intelligence. And yet AI researchers have yet to take advantage of them in training AI systems to be more capable. Today that changes thanks to the work of Kiana Ehsani at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues, who have gathered a unique data set of canine behavior and used it to train an AI system to make dog-like decisions.