Honda Research Institute Joins MIT In Creating “Curious Minded Machine”

Honda has joined forces with three universities in order to start developing curious artificial intelligence. The project was dubbed the Curious Minded Machine and it aims to become a system that will learn the same way humans do – more explicitly, like children do, by learning to learn.

Honda hopes that the intelligent system they will develop will be able to observe human interactions and the tasks they do and then come up with more efficient ways for people to finish those tasks.

The three universities that will be partnering up with Honda will each tackle a different problem. For example, University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering will work towards the mathematical model of curiosity, while MIT’s CSAIL program has set its sights on systems that can predict phenomena by looking into what it cannot predict very well and finding ways to get the information it needs to improve its prediction abilities.

The University of Pennsylvania on the other hand will be working on mimicking biological learning in AI and ‘applying an embodied, active and efficient approach to acquiring representations of the surrounding world and actions.’

“Our ultimate goal is to create new types of machines that can acquire an interest in learning and knowledge, and the ability to interact with the world and others.  “We want to develop Curious Minded Machines that use curiosity to serve the common good by understanding people’s needs, empowering human capability, and ultimately addressing complex societal issues.”

 – Soshi Iba, Principal Scientist for the Honda Research Institute USA Inc. 

At the end of the three year program, every team will be expected to show results in the form of working examples, prototypes or demonstrations. They will represent the foundation for the Curious Minded Machine, the very first step towards turning it into a reality.

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