[ExI] Neuromodulation Is the Secret Sauce for This Adaptive, Fast-Learning AI

[JADE AND EUNICE CHANNEL]

"Our ability to adapt is deeply rooted within our brain’s chemical base
code. Although modern AI and neurocomputation have largely focused on
loosely recreating the brain’s electrical signals, chemicals are actually
the prima donna of brain-wide neural transmission."

"Chemical neurotransmitters not only allow most signals to jump from one
neuron to the next, they also feedback and fine-tune a neuron’s electrical
signals to ensure they’re functioning properly in the right contexts. This
process, traditionally dubbed neuromodulation, has been front and center in
neuroscience research for many decades. More recently, the idea has
expanded to also include the process of directly changing electrical
activity through electrode stimulation rather than chemicals."

"Neural chemicals are the targets for most of our current medicinal drugs
that re-jigger brain functions and states, such as anti-depressants or
anxiolytics. Neuromodulation is also an immensely powerful way for the
brain to flexibly adapt, which is why it’s perhaps surprising that the
mechanism has rarely been explicitly incorporated into AI methods that
mimic the brain."

"This week, a team from the University of Liege in Belgium went old school.
Using neuromodulation as inspiration, they designed a new deep learning
model
<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227922>
that explicitly adopts the mechanism to better learn adaptive behaviors.
When challenged on a difficult navigational task, the team found that
neuromodulation allowed the artificial neural net to better adjust to
unexpected changes."

“For the first time, cognitive mechanisms identified in neuroscience are
finding algorithmic applications in a multi-tasking context. This research
opens perspectives in the exploitation in AI of neuromodulation, a key
mechanism in the functioning of the human brain,” said study author Dr.
Damien Ernst."


https://singularityhub.com/2020/02/11/neuromodulation-is-the-secret-sauce-for-this-adaptive-fast-learning-ai/
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