Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

1
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
1

• This unit has three main sections
• Examples on animal behavior
• Natural intelligence
• Natural and artificial intelligence

2
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 1 flocking and migrating birds
• The birds all keep formation
• They change course together
• Steer on the same heading.
• They seem to be moving as a single group, but
  there is no leader, no observable external
  guidance and no obvious way in which the birds
  might be communicating across the flock.
• Most bird species migrate northwards in the
  spring to breed, and south in the winter to
  warmer climates where food will be plentiful.

3
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 1 flocking and migrating birds
• Some species travel by day, others by night
• Some fly in immense flocks, others alone.
• Many cover enormous distances the arctic tern
  (Sterna paradisaea) migrates from Maine in the
  USA to the coast of Africa and then down to the
  Antarctic Circle, travelling as much as 35 000
  kilometres a year.
• Most breeding and wintering grounds cover
  relatively small geographical areas, yet the
  birds find their way to them unerringly, year
  after year.

4
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 1 flocking and migrating birds
• For example, the greater snow goose (Chen
  caerulescens atlantica) breeds in a very specific
  region of the Canadian High Arctic, from the Foxe
  Basin to Alert on northern Ellesmere Island.
• They winter along the United States Atlantic
  coast migrating more than 4000 kilometers, in
  flocks of between 35 and 1000 birds, depending on
  the season.

5
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 1 flocking and migrating birds

6
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 1 flocking and migrating birds
• How birds are able to navigate with such accuracy
  is not fully understood, but most species are
  thought to use a number of range- and
  direction-finding strategies, including
• Steering by visual landmarks such as coastlines,
  rivers or mountains
• Setting flying courses by the sun (especially at
  sunset) and stars (especially the Pole Star and
  the constellations around it)
• Following the Earths magnetic field iron-based
  minerals in birds skulls enable them to fly
  north along magnetic field lines.
• Some birds, such as petrels, also use their sense
  of smell to navigate, but only as a supplement to
  the mechanisms described above.

7
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 2 Raiding army ants
• The many species of carnivorous army ants
  (Eciton) live in colonies, maybe up to a million
  ants strong.
• Army ant nests are often referred to as
  bivouacs, because they are not earth
  constructions like those of other ant species
  they are formed by the ants themselves,
  clustering together to form walls, fastening onto
  each other using their mandibles and claws on
  their legs.
• Despite being more or less blind, army ants
  search for prey in immense, highly organised
  groups either swarms or columns, depending on
  the species.

8
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 2 Raiding army ants
• In a column raid, the ants spread out from the
  colony along a single trail from which foraging
  worker ants branch off along smaller columns.
• A swarm raid also starts along a trunk trail,
  which divides into numerous columns that then
  recombine into a single advancing swarm front.
• For regularity, organisation and sheer savagery,
  nothing quite matches the swarm raider

9
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Preliminary examples
• Case study 2 Raiding army ants

10
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence to refresh our memory of
  the view of intelligence
• It is based on a certain conception of human
  intelligence, on a general understanding of the
  workings of our own minds.
• As conscious beings, we know that we bring
  special abilities to the world we use language
  and logic to plan, communicate and carry out
  complex tasks
• we reason about the present and the future
• we respond flexibly to new situations or
  unexpected developments.

11
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence intelligence
• To sum this up, these are some of the presumed
  basic characteristics of human intelligence in
  the broadest sense, characteristics that
  conventional AI seeks to replicate on machines
• Knowledge
• rational thought (using symbols to reason with,
  as in logic and mathematics) language (using
  symbols to communicate in speech and writing)
• the ability to make plans, design and foresee
• the ability to learn specialized knowledge and
  skills.
• But although we might not call ants or geese
  intelligent in any of the above senses, it is a
  simple randomness taking place in the behavior
  described in the case studies. We might try for a
  rather more inclusive understanding of the idea
  of intelligence.

12
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence intelligence
• Exercise 1.3
• To what extent do you think a chimpanzee could be
  called intelligent? What about a dog? An
  insect? Do you think there could be any
  alternative conceptions of intelligence, or is
  human intelligence the only sort possible?

13
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence
• Purposeful behavior
• Systematic behavior

14
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 3 tool using primates
• Most non-human anthropoid primates (monkeys,
  apes) construct and use tools.
• Chimpanzees, for instance, use sticks to break
  open termite nests, pick the locks of their
  cages, and push away dangerous or unpleasant
  objects that they would rather not touch
• they use leaves to clean themselves and food
  items as bait.
• If one is available, they will use a stout rod to
  prise apart the bars of their cage so that they
  can put their heads out for a better view.

15
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 3 tool using primates
• A screwdriver dropped into a chimps cage may be
  used as a spear, hammer, probe, mill, toothpick
  or for any other purpose the chimp can put it to.
• Orangutans, however, prefer to hide the
  screwdriver and then barter it for a food
  reward from their keepers.
• Gorillas will first try to eat the screwdriver
  and then ignore it thereafter.
• However, gorillas in the wild do use sticks as
  weapons and, in captivity, can be taught to store
  water in containers.

16
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 3 tool using primates
• Both chimps and orangutans can make strategic use
  of tools to accomplish goals such as obtaining
  food, often devoting a lot of time and experiment
  to the problem.
• They will use sticks to reach out for food
  outside their cages, searching for longer sticks
  or even joining sticks together, if necessary,
  until they have an instrument long enough to rake
  the food towards them.
• If food is suspended above them they will make a
  stable stack of objects, or balance a pole, and
  then climb it to reach the goal.

17
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 3 tool using primates

18
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 4 Shellfish eating birds
• The oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) is a
  shorebird that feeds mainly on mussels and other
  shellfish foraged from the shoreline.
• An obvious problem for feeding behaviour of this
  kind is opening the shell to get at the edible
  parts inside.
• Studies of oystercatchers have revealed that they
  break open shells by two means

19
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 4 Shellfish eating birds
• The shells of mussels washed up by the tide onto
  dry land tend to be tightly closed.
• In such cases, the bird will move the shell to a
  dry place where the sand is hard enough to
  provide support soft sand will not do turn it
  over so its thinner, more fragile underside is
  upwards, and then hammer it open with its bill.
• Mussel shells fished out of shallow water are
  generally slightly open. The oystercatchers prise
  the shells of these specimens open by inserting
  their bills into the crack and cutting the
  abductor muscle which holds the shell closed.

20
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Purposeful behavior
• Case study 4 Shellfish eating birds
• Careful observations have suggested that an
  individual oystercatcher specialises in one or
  other of the above techniques.
• This appears to be behaviour learned from the
  birds parents.
• Many species of gull open shells by dropping them
  on a hard surface from a height of several
  metres.
• Herring gulls (Larus argentatus) are particularly
  good at selecting suitably hard dropping zones,
  such as rocks, pavements and car parks, and will
  generally choose the right altitude from which to
  drop the shellfish, depending on the size of the
  target.

21
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Systematic behavior
• One of the most striking features of army ant
  attacks, Raids begin at the same time of day the
  swarm front develops in an apparently disciplined
  fashion individual ants specialize in specific
  tasks
• Prey items are butchered and returned
  methodically to the bivouac the whole
  collective seems to act with the obedience and
  control of an army.
• We noted similarly orderly behavior in the
  migration of birds.
• In all cases the animals seem to be behaving
  systematically, with a regularity that is quite
  unlike the piling up of rocks by a glacier or the
  flow of a river.

22
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Natural intelligence Systematic behavior
• Case study 5 Nest building paper wasps
• The paper wasp is a social insect that lives in
  large colonies and builds elaborate nests
• When a swarm, made up of one or more queens and
  many thousands of workers, arrives at a nesting
  site, nest construction starts with a set of
  hexagonal brood cells attached to a suitable
  support, such as a twig.
• The workers gradually extend this comb of cells
  outwards to form a disc shape, projecting either
  side of the support. The queen begins laying eggs
  in these cells more or less as soon as the
  construction of the comb starts, and a number of
  workers immediately take on the task of removing
  corpses and faeces from them.

23
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
23

• Natural intelligence Systematic behavior
• Case study 5 Nest building paper wasps
• The behavior of the building workers depends on
  the achievements
• They are formed of many groups, each has own
  specialization
• A worker in a group can be a skilled worker in
  another group
• Two groups of specialized workers forage for the
  necessary materials, one for wood pulp and one
  for water, while a third group does the building
• The size of the three groups changes constantly,
  according to the building needs of the moment

24
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Conclusion
• Some naturalists and ethologists (animal behavior
  scientists) insist that animals are completely
  without thought, mentality or conscious
  awareness.
• A few others, such as Donald Griffin, believe
  that even quite simple creatures may have mental
  states comparable in kind to our own.
• The majority do not want to commit themselves,
  but generally avoid questions about animals
  mental life with distaste, on the grounds that
  mental states cannot be observed directly, so
  talk of them is unscientific

25
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence

• Conclusion
• All of our case studies were chosen to suggest
  that this natural intelligence if we understand
  the term in a suitably liberal sense may be
  widespread in nature, and that anthropomorphic
  definitions of the idea might not tell the whole
  story.
• The aim now is to move away from, and to
  contrast, the general idea of intelligence
  implicit in Block 2s approach to artificial
  intelligence, as being exclusively human
  intelligence.

26
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
26

• Natural and artificial living
• So far, we have been looking at intelligence in
  the natural world.
• At this point in the discussion, it is worth
  pausing briefly to consider whether intelligence
  is exclusive to nature and natural systems.
• If it isnt, where else might intelligence be
  found?
• This seems a reasonable question, given that our
  goal is to build intelligent computer-based
  systems artificial systems with intelligent
  capacities.
• But what exactly is an artificial system? What
  does it mean for something to be artificial, as
  opposed to natural?

27
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
27

• Natural and artificial living
• Nature can be defined in countless different
  ways.
• The character of each definition is largely
  determined by who is proposing it (for example, a
  philosopher or a biologist) and the purposes for
  which it is intended.

28
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
28

• Suggested definition of the term Natural
• The essence of a thing, its core or inner
  reality as in, for instance, the statement by
  his very nature, he is cautious
• The sum of all natural things you can probably
  see at once that this definition is circular
  nature is defined in terms of the natural, which
  remains undefined
• All the things in the world that have originated
  without human influence
• All living things, either including or excluding
  humans
• The structures, processes and laws that make up
  the world, which are studied in the Natural
  sciences and which scientists, technologists and
  engineers seek to harness or to modify.

29
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
29

• Nouvelle AI
• Most of the workings of the human mind are hidden
  from us
• The majority of psychologists would agree that
  what you see when you look into your own mind is
  only a small fraction of it.
• The explicit, rational, symbolic part of our
  minds is only the thins visible surface layer of
  an ocean of cognition
• In the nature, you will find cases of
  non-propositional forms of intelligence.
• Animals solve problems constantly without any
  need for symbolic reasoning.

30
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
30

• Nouvelle AI
• An understanding of this natural intelligence
  might help us, as computer scientists, with some
  of the problems that conventional AI has failed
  to solve.
• If we can work out how goal-directed, systematic,
  ordered problem-solving behavior arises in the
  absence of rationality and planning
• if we can make sense of the mechanisms that allow
  both animals and ourselves to perform complex
  actions without conscious thought
• if we consider how these can be replicated on a
  computer, then this could have the following
  effects on AI research

31
Block III, Unit I, Natural intelligence
31

• Nouvelle AI
• New computational tools, techniques and
  approaches may become available, and these may
  yield new insights into the classic problems of
  AI.
• New fields of enquiry may be opened up. Many
  problems that seemed irrelevant to earlier
  researchers, might become solvable.
• The project to bring insights about the
  mechanisms underlying natural intelligence to
  difficult computational problems is called
  biologically inspired computing , or often
  nouvelle AI.