Intelligent behavior depends on the ecological niche: Scaling up AI to human-like intelligence in socio-cultural environments
This is a perspective paper discussing theoretical directions for scaling AI to human-like intelligence, which is incremental as it builds on existing developmental robotics concepts.
The paper argues that current AI lacks a perspective informed by developmental and evolutionary theories of human cognition, particularly the role of ecological niches in shaping intelligence, and proposes developmental artificial intelligence as a promising approach to model human-like intelligence in socio-cultural environments.
This paper outlines a perspective on the future of AI, discussing directions for machines models of human-like intelligence. We explain how developmental and evolutionary theories of human cognition should further inform artificial intelligence. We emphasize the role of ecological niches in sculpting intelligent behavior, and in particular that human intelligence was fundamentally shaped to adapt to a constantly changing socio-cultural environment. We argue that a major limit of current work in AI is that it is missing this perspective, both theoretically and experimentally. Finally, we discuss the promising approach of developmental artificial intelligence, modeling infant development through multi-scale interaction between intrinsically motivated learning, embodiment and a fastly changing socio-cultural environment. This paper takes the form of an interview of Pierre-Yves Oudeyer by Mandred Eppe, organized within the context of a KI - K{ü}nstliche Intelligenz special issue in developmental robotics.