Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:19:16.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Avoiding frostbite: It helps to learn from others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Michael Henry Tessler
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. [email protected]@[email protected]/~mtessler/noahgoodman.netstanford.edu/~mcfrank/
Noah D. Goodman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. [email protected]@[email protected]/~mtessler/noahgoodman.netstanford.edu/~mcfrank/
Michael C. Frank
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. [email protected]@[email protected]/~mtessler/noahgoodman.netstanford.edu/~mcfrank/

Abstract

Machines that learn and think like people must be able to learn from others. Social learning speeds up the learning process and – in combination with language – is a gateway to abstract and unobservable information. Social learning also facilitates the accumulation of knowledge across generations, helping people and artificial intelligences learn things that no individual could learn in a lifetime.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bonawitz, E., Shafto, P., Gweon, H., Goodman, N. D., Spelke, E. & Schulz, L. (2011) The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition 120(3):322–30. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.001.Google Scholar
Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J. & Henrich, J. (2011) The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(suppl 2):10918–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buchsbaum, D., Gopnik, A., Griffiths, T. L. & Shafto, P. (2011) Children's imitation of causal action sequences is influenced by statistical and pedagogical evidence. Cognition 120(3):331–40. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.001.Google Scholar
Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13(4):148–53.Google Scholar
Frank, M. C. & Goodman, N. D. (2014) Inferring word meanings by assuming that speakers are informative. Cognitive Psychology 75:8096.Google Scholar
Gelman, S. A. (2009) Learning from others: Children's construction of concepts. Annual Review of Psychology 60:115–40.Google Scholar
Goodman, N. D. & Frank, M. C. (2016) Pragmatic language interpretation as probabilistic inference. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20(11):818–29.Google Scholar
Kline, M. A. (2015) How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2015;38:e31.Google Scholar
Lambert, A (2011) The gates of hell: Sir John Franklin's tragic quest for the Northwest Passage. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shafto, P., Goodman, N. D. & Frank, M. C. (2012) Learning from others: The consequences of psychological reasoning for human learning. Perspectives on Psychological Science 7(4):341–51.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1999) The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tsividis, P. A., Pouncy, T., Xu, J. L., Tenenbaum, J. B. & Gershman, S. J. (2017) Human learning in Atari. In: Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Spring Symposium on Science of Intelligence: Computational Principles of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, March 25–27, 2017. AAAI Press.Google Scholar