The 1990 progress report and future plans

This document describes the progress and plans of the Artificial Intelligence Research Branch (RIA) at ARC in 1990. Activities span a range from basic scientific research to engineering development and to fielded NASA applications, particularly those applications that are enabled by basic research carried out at RIA. Work is conducted in-house and through collaborative partners in academia and industry. Our major focus is on a limited number of research themes with a dual commitment to technical excellence and proven applicability to NASA short, medium, and long-term problems. RIA acts as the Agency's lead organization for research aspects of artificial intelligence, working closely with a second research laboratory at JPL and AI applications groups at all NASA centers

An Analogical Paradox for Nonhuman Primates: Bridging the Perceptual-Conceptual Gap

Over the past few decades, the dominant view by comparative psychologists of analogical reasoning in nonhuman primates was one of dichotomy between apes, including humans, and monkeys: the distinction between the analogical ape and paleological monkey (Thompson & Oden, 2000). Whereas evidence for analogy proper by representation reinterpretation in monkeys is sparse and debated, the gap between that which is analogic and paleologic has been narrowed by the studies presented here. Representation of relational concepts important for analogy proves difficult for rhesus and capuchin monkeys without the ability to rely on a greater amount of perceptual variability, implicating a perceptually-bound predisposition in problem-solving (Chapters 2-3). A shift in attention from perceptual features to abstract concepts for employment in relational matching is again difficult, but not impossible given cognitive incentive in the form of differential outcomes to refocus attention on conceptual properties (Chapter 4). Finally, chimpanzees unlike monkeys appear more apt to reason by analogy, perhaps due to a more default conceptual focus (Chapter 5). Taken together, these studies provide an account for the emergence of analogical reasoning skills throughout the primate lineage in contrast to views regarding analogy a hallmark of human intelligence

If deep learning is the answer, then what is the question?

Neuroscience research is undergoing a minor revolution. Recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) research have opened up new ways of thinking about neural computation. Many researchers are excited by the possibility that deep neural networks may offer theories of perception, cognition and action for biological brains. This perspective has the potential to radically reshape our approach to understanding neural systems, because the computations performed by deep networks are learned from experience, not endowed by the researcher. If so, how can neuroscientists use deep networks to model and understand biological brains? What is the outlook for neuroscientists who seek to characterise computations or neural codes, or who wish to understand perception, attention, memory, and executive functions? In this Perspective, our goal is to offer a roadmap for systems neuroscience research in the age of deep learning. We discuss the conceptual and methodological challenges of comparing behaviour, learning dynamics, and neural representation in artificial and biological systems. We highlight new research questions that have emerged for neuroscience as a direct consequence of recent advances in machine learning.Comment: 4 Figures, 17 Page

Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition

Reports findings from multiple neuroscientific studies on the impact of arts training on the enhancement of other cognitive capacities, such as reading acquisition, sequence learning, geometrical reasoning, and memory

Artificial general intelligence: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI 2009, Arlington, Virginia, USA, March 6-9, 2009

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research focuses on the original and ultimate goal of AI – to create broad human-like and transhuman intelligence, by exploring all available paths, including theoretical and experimental computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and innovative interdisciplinary methodologies. Due to the difficulty of this task, for the last few decades the majority of AI researchers have focused on what has been called narrow AI – the production of AI systems displaying intelligence regarding specific, highly constrained tasks. In recent years, however, more and more researchers have recognized the necessity – and feasibility – of returning to the original goals of the field. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition back to confronting the more difficult issues of human level intelligence and more broadly artificial general intelligence

Developmental Bootstrapping of AIs

Although some current AIs surpass human abilities in closed artificial worlds such as board games, their abilities in the real world are limited. They make strange mistakes and do not notice them. They cannot be instructed easily, fail to use common sense, and lack curiosity. They do not make good collaborators. Mainstream approaches for creating AIs are the traditional manually-constructed symbolic AI approach and generative and deep learning AI approaches including large language models (LLMs). These systems are not well suited for creating robust and trustworthy AIs. Although it is outside of the mainstream, the developmental bootstrapping approach has more potential. In developmental bootstrapping, AIs develop competences like human children do. They start with innate competences. They interact with the environment and learn from their interactions. They incrementally extend their innate competences with self-developed competences. They interact and learn from people and establish perceptual, cognitive, and common grounding. They acquire the competences they need through bootstrapping. However, developmental robotics has not yet produced AIs with robust adult-level competences. Projects have typically stopped at the Toddler Barrier corresponding to human infant development at about two years of age, before their speech is fluent. They also do not bridge the Reading Barrier, to skillfully and skeptically draw on the socially developed information resources that power current LLMs. The next competences in human cognitive development involve intrinsic motivation, imitation learning, imagination, coordination, and communication. This position paper lays out the logic, prospects, gaps, and challenges for extending the practice of developmental bootstrapping to acquire further competences and create robust, resilient, and human-compatible AIs.Comment: 102 pages, 29 figure

Graph Laplacian for Image Anomaly Detection

Reed-Xiaoli detector (RXD) is recognized as the benchmark algorithm for image anomaly detection; however, it presents known limitations, namely the dependence over the image following a multivariate Gaussian model, the estimation and inversion of a high-dimensional covariance matrix, and the inability to effectively include spatial awareness in its evaluation. In this work, a novel graph-based solution to the image anomaly detection problem is proposed; leveraging the graph Fourier transform, we are able to overcome some of RXD's limitations while reducing computational cost at the same time. Tests over both hyperspectral and medical images, using both synthetic and real anomalies, prove the proposed technique is able to obtain significant gains over performance by other algorithms in the state of the art.Comment: Published in Machine Vision and Applications (Springer