How To Teach Robots Common Sense

Chances are you're familiar with the term “machine learning” but what does that actually mean? In most cases, it starts with training algorithms from data sets but automation alone will never be enough. It is an underappreciated irony of artificial intelligence that for machines to truly get smarter, real people have to train them.

One article proposed that the real secret for helping AI get smarter faster is by training it to ask dumb questions. The better it gets at asking questions that real people (sometimes paid to respond) will engage with, the faster the learning process will go:

“When people actually responded to a query, the system received feedback telling it to adjust its inner workings so as to behave similarly in the future. Over time, the AI implicitly picked up lessons in language and social norms, honing its ability to ask questions that were sensical and easily answerable. The main innovation was rewarding the system for getting humans to respond.”

In business settings, we sometimes say there are no dumb questions. When training technology, it seems the same is true.