A fictional robotic velociraptor’s AI brain and nervous system
Be afraid, giggle, then be very afraid again
On screen, the grey skinned velociraptor twitches and spasms, trying to hurl itself to its feet under the command to rise. A thousand parallel iterations live in their simple digital worlds, trying to find a path to standing up. One manages, briefly, then collapses again. Hundreds of the iterations are abandoned, and the ones that were closest spawned again into a thousand dreams of a standing robotic dinosaur. Eventually, one succeeds in lunging to its feet and staying erect. The neural net that learned to stand survives. The rest disappear into the ether.
This article continues the exploration that David Clement and I are making into machine learning via Plastic Dinosaur, a robotic velociraptor guided by neural nets. It’s a fictional exercise to introduce and play with concepts of robotics and machine learning, and to explore aspects of where machine learning is today. The first piece was about PD’s physical body. This piece is about his brains, what makes him tick and also occasionally lunge at small…
