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Wednesday 16 May 2018

This DeepMind AI Spontaneously Developed Digital Navigation ‘Neurons’ Like Ours

Comment: Ahh, Google DeepMind - serving our interests by mining our minds for a more efficient society. What could go wrong?

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Singularity Hub

"The research on grid-cells is still very much basic science, but being able to mimic the powerful navigational capabilities of animals could be extremely useful for everything from robots to drones to self-driving cars."


When Google DeepMind researchers trained a neural network to tackle a virtual maze, it spontaneously developed digital equivalents to the specialized neurons called grid cells that mammals use to navigate. Not only did the resulting AI system have superhuman navigation capabilities, the research could provide insight into how our brains work.

Grid cells were the subject of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, alongside other navigation-related neurons. These cells are arranged in a lattice of hexagons, and the brain effectively overlays this pattern onto its environment. Whenever the animal crosses a point in space represented by one of the corners these hexagons, a neuron fires, allowing the animal to track its movement.

Mammalian brains actually have multiple arrays of these cells. These arrays create overlapping grids of different sizes and orientations that together act like an in-built GPS. The system even works in the dark and independently of the animal’s speed or direction.

Exactly how these cell work and the full range of their functions is still somewhat of a mystery though. One recently proposed hypothesis suggests they could be used for vector-based navigation—working out the distance and direction to a target “as the crow flies.”

That’s a useful capability because it makes it possible for animals or artificial agents to quickly work out and choose the best route to a particular destination and even find shortcuts.

So, the researchers at DeepMind decided to see if they could test the idea in silico using neural networks, as they roughly mimic the architecture of the brain.

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