By Matthew Gwynfryn and Djuke Veldhuis
A good number of us shout at our laptops when they misbehave, often to no avail. Perhaps soon they will listen. Could we one day teach them — much like we do children or pets — how to behave?
For the majority of human history, we have survived and flourished based on our ability to learn. Today’s machines learn — Siri perks up at the sound of your voice, traffic lights react to the flux of cars — but only in limited ways. They can respond to direct instructions, such as specific inputs and commands, they can be programmed to recognize patterns, and, in some instances, they can learn for themselves. But our machines may have the potential to become the robotic equivalent of hunter-gatherer children, who are arguably unrivaled in the full range of activities they undertake to learn to engage with their worlds. (Check out this video.)
It may seem odd to juxtapose the lives of hunter-gatherer children — who quickly become adept at bringing in berries, figs, tubers, and even small game such as hyrax and galagos (in parts of Africa, for example), sharing their haul with family and friends, and helping to raise their siblings — with the comparatively flat existence of machines that have no culture to speak of, and little personality to boot. While forager children are taught an…
