Researchers Teach AI to Think like a Dog

Source: Researchers teach AI to think like a dog and find out what they know about the world – The Verge

Animals could provide a new source of training data for AI systems.

To train AI to think like a dog, the researchers first needed data. They collected this in the form of videos and motion information captured from a single dog, a Malamute named Kelp. A total of 380 short videos were taken from a GoPro camera mounted to the dog’s head, along with movement data from sensors on its legs and body.

They captured a dog going about its daily life — walking, playing fetch, and going to the park.

Researchers analyzed Kelp’s behavior using deep learning, an AI technique that can be used to sift patterns from data, matching the motion data of Kelp’s limbs and the visual data from the GoPro with various doggy activities.

The resulting neural network trained on this information could predict what a dog would do in certain situations. If it saw someone throwing a ball, for example, it would know that the reaction of a dog would be to turn and chase it.

The predictive capacity of their AI system was very accurate, but only in short bursts. In other words, if the video shows a set of stairs, then you can guess the dog is going to climb them. But beyond that, life is simply too varied to predict. 

Dogs “clearly demonstrate visual intelligence, recognizing food, obstacles, other humans, and animals,” so does a neural network trained to act like a dog show the same cleverness?

It turns out yes.

Researchers applied two tests to the neural network, asking it to identify different scenes (e.g., indoors, outdoors, on stairs, on a balcony) and “walkable surfaces” (which are exactly what they sound like: places can walk). In both cases, the neural network was able to complete these tasks with decent accuracy using just the basic data it had of a dog’s movements and whereabouts.