When we are babies, we ask ourselves many questions. Somehow, we have to grow from sentient lumps to mobile, rational, and attentive communicators in just a few years. Here we have a baby with no vocabulary in a room cluttered with toys and stuffed animals. When you pick up a Lincoln Log, the caretaker says, “This is a 'log.'” Ultimately, the term “log” does not refer strictly to this particular brown plastic cylinder, or brown plastic cylinders in general, but rather embodies the characteristics of the section of tree that has been felled and left bare. brown plastic cylinder. Of course, this is also a “log”.
There has been much research and intense debate about how babies accomplish this. Some scientists argue that most of our language acquisition can be explained by associative learning, because we associate sounds with sensations in the same way that dogs associate the sound of a bell with food. . Others argue that the features that have shaped the forms of all languages are hardwired into the human mind and are important for our learning. Additionally, some argue that young children build their understanding of new words on top of their understanding of other words.
The conversation took a step further on a recent Sunday morning when Tammy Kwan and Brenden Lake delivered a bowl of blackberries to their 21-month-old daughter Luna's mouth. Luna wore pink leggings and a pink tutu, a silicone bib around her neck, and a soft pink hat on her head. A lightweight GoPro type camera was attached to the front.
“Babuga,” she said, pointing to the fruit with a round finger. Dr. Kwan gave her her break and Dr. Lake looked at the empty bowl with amusement. “It's about $10,” he said. The camera light flashed.
Dr. Lake, a psychologist at New York University who focuses on human and artificial intelligence research, has spent an hour each week for the past 11 months attaching a camera to Luna and recording her play from her perspective. . His goal is to use videos to train language models with the same sensory input that young children receive, his LunaBot, so to speak. In doing so, we hope to create better tools for understanding both AI and ourselves. “We think this study ultimately makes a connection between these two fields of research,” said Dr. Lake. “We can finally get them to interact with each other.”